By A Correspondent-Zesa said lack of service vehicles and poor remunerations were causing the power utility to take agers to attend electric faults.

The justification was presented by Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (Zera) board chairman Dr David Madzikanda during a media engagement meeting in Harare on Friday.

“In short, Zesa is incapacitated because of the level of tariff which is sitting at roughly USc7,5 when we are supposed to be upwards of USc10 per unit,” said Dr Madzikanda.

“So you can appreciate when they are incapacitated. What it means is that when there is a fault you can’t be responsive.”

Dr Madzikanda, who worked for Zesa for 17 years, said during his time, they were able to attend to faults even at midnight because the power utility had vehicles and a considerably incentivised labour force.
“But nowadays it (fault) has to wait for a day if you are lucky,” he said.
It might wait for a week, two weeks or never. Why? It is because they are incapacitated, they don’t have vehicles, they don’t have competent personnel to start off.

Zesa doesn’t have the capacity to pay and retain the calibre of staff they require. They also don’t have other materials. I know I am not painting a good picture, but essentially we are driving towards a situation where we should be able to support Zesa with a meaningful tariff to be able to achieve what we are talking about (universal access of electricity).”

Dr Madzikanda said it was better to have a correctly priced tariff compared to a lower tariff which did not encourage investment in new plants and service vehicles because the costs of not having power “are too ghastly to contemplate”.

He said even the drive towards Vision 2030 of an upper-middle-income economy would be affected without a steady supply of electricity.

Zesa has since adopted a stepped-up tariff where heavy users per month are punished by a higher tariff, while lower power users pay less.

Zera chief executive officer Mr Eddington Mazambani said: “Yes they have written to us requesting a tariff review, but they have to agree with the Ministry (of Energy and Power Development) first.”

Once the Ministry clears Zesa’s request, Zera then engages consumers such as the Government, mining, agricultural, commercial and domestic consumers to get their perspectives and act accordingly