Shamefulness of Zesco and its enablers in government

By Daily Revelation Editor

Zambia Consumer Association (ZACA) executive secretary Juba Sakala has raised valid points about the Zesco power outages despite the recent tariff hike adjustments as alarming and demonstrate Zesco’s lack of transparency and accountability.

Sakala is perplexed that Zesco had assured consumers of stable power supply for 7 hours after the tariff adjustments, but in reality the utility company has been inconsistent and unreliable.

Sakala is expressing the anger and frustration millions of Zambians have towards Zesco and its enablers in government in terms of how they have handled the load-shedding problem since the crisis started earlier this year.

Zesco recently announced an immediate adjustment to its power rationing schedules, reducing electricity supply to residential customers to less than the previously scheduled 7-hours.

The utility company claimed that the decision came as a result of unavailability of up to 220 megawatts of power imports due to import route constraints. However, Zesco has not mentioned the country where the same unavailability is coming from, neither have they mentioned the nature of the import constraints.

They have also not mentioned the number of hours the electricity will be available. They just vaguely said that the supply to residential customers will be less than the previously scheduled 7-hours. They have not announced whether that less than 7-hours is 6,5,4,3,2 or even 1 hour. They think they are talking to gullible idiots who can’t tell when a proficient liar is telling another lie. And those who want to separate this Zesco shamefulness from the government are mulnourishly misguided, because Zesco cannot behave with such impunity if they did not have the backing of State House and the people in government.

It has become easy now for those who are discerning, that the decision to increase electricity tariffs with the promise to raise hours of electricity supply to seven was meant to hoodwink Zambians into accepting the hiked prices without necessarily increasing hours of power supply to the people.

Those who are discerning know very well that the decision by the Energy Regulation Board (ERB) to reject the earlier application by Zesco for an emergency tariff hike was nothing but a public relations stunt. Some people celebrated thinking that finally the government had taken a side for the interest of the public, not knowing that behind the scenes they were busy strategising on how to effect the tariffs without raising too much public outcry. It seems from their planning, an idea emerged on how they were going to lie around this thorny issue by dangling a carrot of 7-hours power supply to Zambians, in order to achieve their intended objective of an emergency hike. They knew fully well that they were not going to deliver on their promise, like the many other broken promises.

Therefore, it did not catch us by surprise when Zesco issued the vaguely crafted statement, so that they could use the same to provide power for any number of hours they wished, as long as it was below the 7-hours they had promised. For instance, they can even provide that power for one hour daily without taking any blame for doing the same.

And what country is this where the same little power is only made available to consumers deep in the night when people are sleeping, with power going off before they even wake up from their beds? Is this how lowly this government considers the people of this country to treat them with such reckless contempt? Is this what the people bargained for when they were lied into agreeing to the tariff hikes?