ZESA officials attending a meeting in Bulawayo to discuss the current electricity challenges facing the country were yesterday left embarrassed when a sudden power cut was effected at the venue, stalling discussions for nearly an hour.
BY SILAS NKALA
The meeting, organised by the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (Zera), was held at Harvest International Church premises in the city centre, with the aim of getting an appreciation from energy consumers on the problems they were facing in accessing electricity and fuel.
The power cut came immediately after some residents had complained that the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company was not sticking to publicised load-shedding schedules.
Residents attending the meeting said power cuts were damaging their household appliances. But while a Zesa engineer was defending the load-shedding schedule, there was a power cut at the meeting, apparently without the knowledge of senior Zesa officials.
The power cut stalled several presentations which were set to be made by Zera officials for a considerable time, until power was eventually restored at around 1pm.
Although indications were that the city centre was being spared from load-shedding during the day for the benefit of businesses, Zesa officials present at the meeting failed to explain the outage as they were caught unawares by the power cut and seemed confused.
Speaking before the power cut, Zera chief executive officer Gloria Magombo said it was sad to note that while the country was facing a power crisis, some people were abusing electricity by leaving lights on, either at home or in offices after work.
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“This is abuse of electricity which also eats into your pockets,” Magombo said.
She said Zera always listened to consumers’ concerns and also talks to energy and electricity providers so as to balance demand and supply.
Magombo further said her organisation, officially constituted in 2011 to licence and regulate energy and power supply providers, acts as an arbitrator on how consumers and suppliers should relate.
Magombo said while Zimbabwe was importing power from Hydro Cahora Bassa in Mozambique, Zambia’s Zesco and Eskom of South Africa, it was also exporting 80 megawatts (MW) to Namibia at a time the country was facing crippling electricity shortages.
She said the total available power for the country was 974MW, while the demand was 1 535MW, leaving a shortfall of 561MW.
She also said the total power import at the moment was only 50MW.
“In order to augment the current supplies, we have licenced 20 independent energy or power producers’ projects,” Magombo said.
“We already have four energy producers who are now operating producing 20MW, but that is not enough. Government has embarked on various projects to increase power supply. We have independent producers who will be coming into the country soon to produce over 4 000MW.”
Magombo said people had the right to access proper and adequate energy or electricity at proper pricing with bills being made available to them.
She said Zera would soon open offices in Bulawayo.
The Zera boss also encouraged residents to safeguard the power utility’s infrastructure against vandalism, adding such wanton destruction had cost the country a lot of money in rehabilitations.
