Kaputa district in the Northern province has been hit by a one-week electricity black-out.
The power black-out being experienced in the area is due to the break down of the Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation, ZESCO, generators.
Kaputa District Business Association Chairperson, Gershom Musonda, confirmed the development to ZANIS in Lusaka today.
He disclosed that operations at the Kaputa District hospital, public and government institutions and business communities have been negatively affected by the lack of electricity in the area.
Mr. Musonda said the situation has also paralysed the water reticulation system in residential areas, institutional and government offices.
Mr. Musonda said people are forced to travel over 200 kilo meters to Nchelenge and another 150 km to Mporokoso to charge their cellular phones to communicate and that the people of Kaputa have been detached from current affairs on both radio and television.
He has since appealed to ZESCO Northern region in Ndola to intervene as local ZESCO plant has no capacity to address the situation.
But Kaputa Constituency Member of Parliament, Mutale Nalumango, says she is aware and quickly pointed out government is considering to construct a hydro-power station to link the district to the national grid to end the electricity blues.
Mrs. Nalumango in a separate interview said the Rural Electrification Programme, REP, has already conducted feasibility studies on the project.
She assured that ZESCO in Kaputa has sufficient fuel but the problem is the old generators that are constantly breaking down.
Kaputa is one of the rural districts in the country which is being run by thermal power generators to produce electricity.
ZANIS
The sad stories never end. It doesn’t seem like Zesco is planning on fixing this anytime soon. This is crap!
#1,ur so right.Having personally been Kwa Kaputa,I am not shocked though.The generators are turned on at 17hrs and turned off at 7 in the morning unless fyali chinjaa nomba.Now they want to deny them the lil access they have to electricity.kwena Ni Zesco:Darkening the nation zowona.
Kwa puta,bushe cant they use their acumen in african technology to generate electricity?i mean utubwanga which they are known of.
How will Zesco supply electricity to south africa in 2010 as per agreement when its home towns are in dark.? .. Just to show off while hiding problems facing the whole country. Home. towns MUST be better off b4 thinking of exporting essential resources to other countries.