A six day power blackout in Eastern, Muchinga, Northern, Luapula and parts of Central Provinces has seriously affected businesses and created a water crisis.
The electricity problem which was caused by a system disturbance on the Kabwe-Pensulo 330 kilovolt ZESCO transmission line on Saturday, forced most economic activities to ground to a halt.
The businesses suffered huge losses as a result of lack of electricity.
Some companies including Government departments were forced to reduce working hours while schools also had to reduce learning hours for pupils.Radio stations were not spared from the crisis as they had to broadcast at intervals due to huge costs associated with running generators.
And a spokesperson for one of the affected companies, Highway Bakery Macdonald Ngwenya said that the company has lost about K 30,000 of business.
Mr Ngwenya said that this was in addition to K14,000 losses which the company recorded as a result of power interruptions on Thursday and Friday last week.
The traders dealing in perishable goods like meat and fish found that they were forced to throw away their products while others had to give them away for free to people.
ZESCO Spokesperson Henry Kapata confirmed yesterday that the power interruption affected Eastern, Northern, Muchinga, Luapula and parts of Central province.
Mr Kapata explained that the problem which occurred around 13:30 hours on Saturday took ZESCO engineers six days to repair because the damage was caused by heavy rains.
He stated that ZESCO had also lost huge amounts of money because of not providing its services to customers in the affected five provinces.
Meanwhile a serious problem of lack of safe drinking water hit Eastern Province especially among those areas relying on supply from Eastern Water and Sewerage Company.
The residents resorted to fetch drinking water from shallow wells.
hmmm, six days only sure? ZESCO mulebako serious please. you should have taken nangu one month meanwhile ifintu ni lungu.
Power quality engineers mu zesco tamwaba. because one of the problems power quality engineers solve is uninterrupted power supply.
PF claimed that powercuts have no economic impact and people from these provinces agreed with them. Let them enjoy!
Zesco has now become a laughing stock, how can Engineers take 6 days to fix problem and u still paying them alot of money for the incompetence,,,only in Zed
Engineers you say? How much of engineers are these chaps experience wise? Check it out and you may find that the so called engineers are inexperienced ones without dedication to work and can not match the ousted/retired even lower placed skilled technicians graduated from NORTEC and ZIT who knew what they were doing and understood what uninterrupted electricity supply means to economic activity as a lifeline even to human life support! Never in past years has an outage lasting this long was ever experienced!
BA DUNUNA ZOONA
Have these chaps even improved power uptake from Maamba or they have come up with another excuse?
Let these provinces that voted for a failure feel the pain of not having someone qualified. Zesco is full of carders and non professional people. Are you telling me Zesco does not have a chief engineer who has more than 5 -10 years experience and can deal with problems promptly while delegating tasks to the intermediate and junior engineers?
Please hear the presidential petition so our governance system can be cleaned up and we can more professional not carders and thugs who are there to loot national resources. I bet you the so called engineers who having a good time looting up until day 4 when they knew people will react.
Power quality engineers to solve politically motivated power outages! Now that’s classic! If the country fails to plan through questionable leadership and developmental plans, indeed it has planned to fail. Please do not blame it on the poor engineer. It will be folly to even suggest that engineers are letting the country down. They work with very limited resources at the direction of misguided politicians.
There’s no respect for professionalism in Zambia. Everyone is a Subject Matter Expert. 50 years of Independence or is it economical turmoil through questionable leadership?
The biggest problem is for the politicians making people gullible enough to think declaring Zambia a Christian nation will solve these economical and developmental challenges. Just pray! Fika isova mentality!
This is a remind to all business owners to have standby generators. ZESCO may dissapoint.
Let us find a solution to the problem instead of finger pointing. What we need is separating some of these things from politics by changing appointees to these companies. A politician’s interest is to be in office and to eat what he can until they are chased or disappointed
This is unfortunate situation, but we should understand that such things can happen any where in the world. Even a person can be sick for more that 6 days and yet Doctors are giving him medicine. These are PF members who are always teasing others. The only advice we should give to business men in particular is to buy stand by Generators. Zesco Engineers nalimupela ukuboko., you are hard workers than Councils.
Surprisingly, the affected provinces are those that got drunk with dununa fever and are just paying for their sins. When will we foolish Zambians wake up?
The solution to Zambia power crisis is simple but PF CHIPANTE-PANTE GOVT is too dull to think or even implement:
1. Mixed bag of energy sources – Solar, Gas, wind etc (we have gas reserves in N/W Province).
2. Pumped Storage – during off peak we pump water from lower reservoir to high one & off-load durin peak time
3. Regulated usage times of mines. Hoisting of ore from U/G happens during peak time. We can negotiate with the mines to reschedule to avoid conflict with domestic consumers
4. Invest in mega Hydro in less-drought prone areas like luapula. Mumbotuta, mambilima etc
5. Invest in micro Hydro for localized supply like the way zengamina in N/W province has been done
6. Exploit thermal in Maamba S/province to the maximum.
7. Appoint me energy minister to execute these plans
Very disappointed
Thank you ZESCO, this couldn’t have happened to more deserving provinces, next time I hope the power outage will be for one month! These people need to know that tribalism comes back to bite its perpetrators! Continue voting for Power Failure as you enjoy drinking dirty water from shallow wells and watch you businesses collapse
Having lived in these frozen parts of the world for close to 20 years, l have had only one or perhaps two black-outs lasting perhaps, 2 hours each. Later the following day, l received an oppology letter/call from the power company saying SORRY and a £40 cheque for the inconvenience. Manje imwe ba zescoro, kaya….