Maravi

Sisala has failed to run Zesco, says HH

Sisala has failed to run Zesco, says HH
By Mutale Kapekele
Tuesday March 11, 2008 [03:00]

UPND president Hakainde Hichilema has said Zesco managing director Rodney Sisala has failed to run the company and should resign. In an interview on Saturday, Hichilema said Sisala should accept that he has failed to run Zesco. “The honourable thing to do when one fails in the corporate world is to resign and give way to people with new ideas to take over,” Hichilema said. “The power outages are devastating the economy when Zambia is not supposed to be one of the countries affected by the power deficit.”

He said the power outages were a reflection of the bad management of the country by the MMD government.

Hichilema also charged that Zesco and the Ministry of Energy were aware of current power deficit more than five years ago but failed to put measures in place to cushion the impact.

“It was announced more than five years ago that the region was going to experience power deficits,” he said. “If Zesco had paid attention to its infrastructure and maintained it, Zambia would have been supplying electricity to the whole region without problems. Now we have 50 per cent of the company’s revenue going to paying of salaries as opposed to the industry standard of 30 per cent, which is extravagance.”

He said if Zesco was properly managed, the 20 per cent ‘extra’ on salaries should have been used to maintain equipment.
Hichilema said the excuse given by the government and Zesco that the power outages were as a result of system failure was ridiculous since they had years to plan ahead.

“We should be bold and say Mr Sisala, you have failed,” he said.
Hichilema said it was unacceptable for and tragic Zesco to be producing 1,400 mega watts of electricity when it could produce around 1700 mega watts.

“This country has a potential to produce 3000 mega watts if power stations are set up in Luapula, North Western and Northern provinces. If the government allowed the private sector to partner with Zesco, we should have had all that by now.”

“With the necessary freedom and support, the private sector could have made a success of the Zambia Tanzania inter-connector but they gave it to Zesco, who have already demonstrated failure, in the tendering process.”

Hichilema said people could not afford to wait for years for the power outages to end and that the government must shorten the time of the power outages which are projected to continue until 2013.

He said an emergence plan should be put in place soon to mitigate the impact of the power outages.

Last month Sisala told the expanded committee on estimates that Zesco was not entirely be blamed for the current power outages being experienced in the country as the problem was regional.

Sisala said stakeholders should not put the blame on Zesco Limited for the current power deficit as the growth in demand for electricity was not expected to be far much higher than the earlier projections.

“The level of demand for electricity has gone up tremendously over the years. This is not only in Zambia, or Angola, Malawi, Botswana; it is a regional problem because of the huge investments that are going on in different economic sectors,” Sisala said. Sisala also said the solution does not lie in having him fired.

Labels: HAKAINDE HICHILEMA, RODNEY SISALA, ZESCO

posted by MrK @ 4:29 AM