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Consumers seek government support on persistent outages
- EMCOZ laments outages and its impact on businesses
- Zimbabwe suffered network collapse due to an electrical surge
Consumers in Zimbabwe have called on the government to intervene and resolve the persistent power outages in the sector. This comes as Zimbabwe has seen an increase in power outages.
The President of the Employers Confederation of Zimbabwe (EMCOZ) Israel Murefu, while speaking on the outage problems and its impact on businesses said ”Power cuts are a serious let down to business as they are disruptive to operations and production. That is the last thing we expected especially given other disruptions we are experiencing which are due to Covid-19 related lockdowns”.
”We do not want to take the clock back to the times of 30% or lower in terms of capacity utilisation and low productivity. We would ask that Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) be assisted in whatever way possible to be able to power the country in general and business in particular”, Murefu added.
The Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA) have also complained about the poor service delivery of ZESA. “We are concerned as residents that the state of service delivery, in general, seems to be continuously deteriorating. It’s a pity that as a country we have failed to invest in alternative smart or green energy despite having plenty of sunshine in the country and solar energy will be a cheaper alternative. We urge the government to change its policy direction to suit our affordability as a nation”, Executive of the CHRA Marvelous Kumalo said.
Last week, the country experienced a grid blackout due to an electrical surge from energy imports. Zimbabwe currently imports electricity from South Africa’s Eskom to make up for deficits in the country.