By Staff Reporter
Former Commerce minister Bob Sichinga says he wonders why the UPND administration is intent on increasing electricity tariffs without first addressing the inefficiency of power utility company Zesco.
Speaking with Daily Revelation on the government’s plans to restructure Zesco into three main components, Sichinga Zambia was also part of the Southern African Power Pool, therefore wondering how that plan from government would fit into all this.
“At the moment there is the issue of Zesco not being able to fulfill its obligations like saying ‘we don’t have meters and therefore there is a backlog of 80 percent on the meters to be installed’,” Sichinga said. “Why are you increasing tariffs without looking at the efficiency of Zesco. If there is inefficiency it affects power generation and distribution. If Zesco is inefficient all those things will continue and create additional costs…They would have to deal with those first before increasing tariffs.”
Sichinga said what the country needed now was to improve Zesco’s efficiency, which would in turn result in more power generation, and subsequently cheaper cost of energy.
He further said that heavy consumers of energy should be the ones to pay more fo it.
“How much are the mines consuming? If they are consuming 70 percent of the energy then that’s what they must pay for. In houses we pay more per unit than the mines,” Sichinga said.
And Sichinga said due to the patchy rains the country is experiencing, the government must take stock of how much maize was in the country, considering the 1.2 million metric tones consumption locally per annum and the 750,000 metric tones that was exported to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for instance.
“Since there has been a liberalisation in the sell of maize, you have to determine what you have…the next issue will be if that’s the case what do you do policy wise in terms of our survival next season,” Sichinga said, adding that government should look into the issue of further exports given the current rainfall conditions. “We should be sending mealie meal locally produced and not maize. Fortunately the President seems to be supporting that.”
