Posted by Own Staff Friday, 05 March 2010 01:37

Residents have vented out their frustrations over the current devastating shortage of electricity in the country and the high bills from Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) and TelOne.

Speaking at public meetings organised by Bulawayo Agenda and the Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association in Cowdray Park and Old Pumula suburbs over the weekend, residents expressed their displeasure to the representatives of the service providers over their failure to provide efficient services.
Residents complained that the current shortages of electricity had a devastating effect on their lives and they also found fault with  the inconsistent billing system from ZESA.

“We would like to understand why ZESA has not devised a system of informing us when they  are going to carry out load shedding as most of our electrical gadgets have been affected by a power surge,” said a resident from Cowdray Park.

They also called on the authority to present updated bills noting that their unavailability also affected their ability to pay for the rates.

“We need ZESA to ensure that we receive our billed statements so that we know how much we are supposed to pay. We cannot be expected to pay for estimated bills,” said a resident.

Pensioners who also attended the meetings said there is need for service providers to review their tariffs in line with salaries as they highlighted that the current bills were beyond the reach of many in the country.

“We are failing to pay for the bills because our pension funds are very little and we cannot raise enough money to repay the debts we owe service providers,” said a pensioner in Old Pumula.

The public raised concerns over the failure by ZESA to provide enough electricity in the country, noting that the people were living in new suburbs without electricity. The residents of Cowdray Park were concerned that some sections of the suburb were yet to witness the installation of electricity at the Hlalani Kuhle/Garikayi houses.

The ZESA representative from the sales and marketing division, Mr. G. Zulu called upon the residents to negotiate with the authority in order to devise mechanisms of paying for their debts.

He said ZESA continued to face challenges with the availability of electricity which had also worsened the load shedding schedule in the city.

“The country does not have enough electricity and the load shedding is expected to be very rigorous in the next few weeks because we currently cannot produce enough from Hwange Power station and also from Kariba. Power Station. Electricty must be rationed so as to avoid tripping that will result in a blackout of the whole country,” he said.

He emphasized the need for the residents to also desist from vandalising ZESA property highlighting that the authority did not have enough funds for repairs.

“There is need for residents to be wary of naked electricity wires which are very dangerous. We also encourage residents to desist from bribing ZESA officials in an attempt to speed the process of repairs in their areas. We call upon residents to assist ZESA in catching the thieves who continue to steal electricity cables and oil from transformers,” said Mr Sibanda, a ZESA representative.

Mr Sibanda emphasised that the country continued to face shortages of electricity because of the failure to rehabilitate the Kariba Power stations because of the socio-economic meltdown as well the huge costs of recapitalisation currently required.