Maravi

Mujuda urges Zesco to resolve power crisis

Mujuda urges Zesco to resolve power crisis
By Chibaula Silwamba
Wednesday February 13, 2008 [03:01]

POST newspapers limited deputy managing director Sam Mujuda has urged Zesco to urgently find a lasting solution to power outages. And New Horizon Printing Press director Nehme Moukheiber said power outages had cost the company extra money to run the standby generator. Meanwhile, Zambia Association of Manufacturers (ZAM) Dev Babbar has said his association has sent notices to its members to update it with information on the losses incurred due to power outages.

Commenting on the frequent power outages that have affected the country, Mujuda said electricity outages were injurious to Zambia’s economy.

“Currently, we are losing out in terms of advertising, copy sales and constant damage to our printing press,” said Mujuda in an interview yesterday. “Our losses are ranging in millions (of kwacha) a day and it’s quite enormous. The losses we are incurring due to power outages are high, meanwhile costs of gathering news and distributing newspapers are not going down.”

He, therefore, urged Zesco to resolve the current power problems to avert adverse impact on the country’s economy.

“There is need for this situation to be addressed and the sooner it is addressed, the better. There is need to find a long-lasting solution to the current power problems,” he said

However, Mujuda said it was difficult to quantify the total loss the company had incurred.

“It will be difficult to quantify the losses right now because almost on a daily basis we are losing; we lose out today and tomorrow we have another loss. It is almost predictable that you expect losses through lost business,” he said.

“Understandably, we know that it is almost impossible to successfully claim against Zesco. Even if you go to court it will be very difficult for you to be successful with Zesco because, I think, the courts will most likely side with Zesco because ruling against Zesco would open a Pandora’s box, which would in turn be against public interest,” said Mujuda.

“If everybody today decided to sue Zesco and succeeded, the utility company would collapse. But there is need for Zesco to help us mitigate our losses. We cannot go on like this. This is injurious to our economic activities.”

Mujuda said standby generators were not the solution to the current power problems.
“Can you imagine if everybody is going to buy generators. We will have almost every household running a generator whenever there is a power outage. Look at the effect that it will have on the environment; there will be noise pollution and emission of gases,” said Mujuda.

And Moukheiber said although power outages had not damaged equipment, his company was spending extra money on fuel for the generators, which was unplanned-for expenditure.

“The inconvenience that New Horizon went through is that we spent money on fuel to operator generators, to create our own power; we went into supplementary expenditure that we had not planned for,” said Moukheiber. “But at the same time we have to pay electricity bills to Zesco.”

And Babbar urged ZAM members to take precautionary measures to avoid adverse effects of power outages.

“We are still doing our survey on the setback that factories experienced because of that (power outages),” said Babbar.

Meanwhile, Luanshya Copper Mine (LCM) chief executive officer Derrick Webbstock warned that if the power outages continued, the company would have to review its operation costs.

“If power outages continue, we will have to review our operations because outages affect our production and profits hence we have to review our costs,” he said. “We lost five days of production because of power outages, US $300,000 worth of damage to electric and related electric switch gears at Luanshya Copper Mine.”

However, Webbstock said LCM had since installed a backup system and the mine was fully operational.

Labels: ENERGY, ZESCO

posted by MrK @ 3:15 PM