Maravi

LETTERS - Zesco

Zesco should be unbundled
By Mubanga Luchembe
Saturday April 26, 2008 [04:00]

I make reference to one of the main news items on ZNBC TV on April 21, 2008 in which the Zambia Business Forum suggested that Zesco should be unbundled into three components namely, generation, transmission and distribution for the purpose of making the corporation operate efficiently. Since the merger of Kariba North Bank and Zesco a few years ago, the latter has become too big, bloated, slow and inefficient.

In all fairness, the call by the Zambia Business Forum is timely because Zesco has painfully let us down. However, I wish to add that generation and transmission on the national grid could be retained by Zesco because the company has the infrastructure and resources in place.

The distribution aspect could be handled by third parties like city and town councils or private companies like Copperbelt Energy Corporation. Better still, quasi government companies could be formed to distribute power using a similar business model like the water and sewerage companies that the Ministry of Local Government has formed and is spearheading in both urban and rural provincial centres.

The new electricity distribution companies that may result from the local government deployment could acquire the electricity distribution rights, infrastructure and resources from Zesco.

The issue at hand is to make Zesco lean, mean, and efficient such that it can react to national power generation and transmission problems that the nation may face to swiftly resolve them.

Zesco’s focus should be on national power generation and transmission only and nothing else. In this way, the company will become efficient.

On the other hand, the electricity generation in isolated areas could initially, be handled by rural town councils who could set up electricity mini-grids from renewable energy-based sources for power generation and eventually be connected to the national grid. It is quite possible that this could be done.

The incumbent ministers of energy, commerce and local government have the essential background, experience and skill regarding the subjects of electricity, business models and councils respectively. They could make such a venture workable if only they got the clearance, put their heads together and seek for assistance from cooperating partners both within and outside Zambia.

It is quite disheartening that Zambia is now experiencing power outages or load shedding on a daily basis when the country has so much wind, sunlight, streams, so many rivers and waterfalls which can be used to generate electricity.

My appeal to our government is to start the process of unbundling Zesco immediately and let town councils and other third parties take up the distribution of electricity.

Besides, town councils in the past were distributors of electricity up to 1973 when Zesco was formed. Its formation resulted into town councils losing the electricity revenue base.

In the recent past, again councils lost the house rental revenue base when the government directed councils to sell all their housing stocks to the sitting tenants. If the suggestion of using the council to handle electricity distribution is implemented, councils will have a lucrative alternative revenue source and solve most of their financial problems they are currently facing.

Let us wisely utilise the resources that God has given us and ensure that the nightmare of power outages and load shedding due to Zesco’s incompetence becomes a thing of the past.

Labels: ZAMBIA BUSINESS FORUM, ZESCO

posted by MrK @ 3:26 AM