MINING operations have returned to normal after being adversely affected by the recent countrywide power outage, the Zambia Chamber of Mines has indicated.
ZCM president, Godwin Beene said the power outage had impacted the day’s mining operations in the midst of the prevailing copper bull market.
Dr Beene said in a statement that ZCM was concerned with the major electricity outage that occurred on Sunday August ,8, this year.
He said employees across the Chamber membership completed shifts without incident of injury during the power outage, despite open pit production in the Northwestern Province being adversely affected.
“Chamber member operations have since returned to normal. For the mining operations in the Copperbelt Province, the standby arrangements of our member Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC) successfully kicked in.
Emergency back-up supply was extended to all their client mine operators on the CEC network to preserve life, production, assets and infrastructure in the national interest,” he said.
He said the chamber membership was looking forward to the resolution of the uncertain and tense status quo in the electricity sector in general, and around CEC.
Dr Beene said the resolution would help boost confidence and reduce the perception of risk.
He said there was need for increased energy generation in North Western Province to help provide supply for open pit mines that were too large for on-site stand by diesel generator solutions in the area.
Dr Beene said additional generation capacity was necessary in meeting the increasing demand of electricity in the mining sector .
Yes this was proof that Zesco and the incompetent PF cannot be relied on
I know Godfrey Beene very well, he is a truly competent man who knows the mining industry very well. He is not going to upset the current president nor the coming one – quite political of course, but I’m sure that in his heart he hopes hopes that PF is on the way out!
Why do we keep hearing of Zambia being in serious debts but at the same time we are told that there is a copper bull market? So technically the people stealing from us are saying you have borrowed but our natural resources can not get us out of debt because they don’t belong to us? This is where my people are so docile. We could pay off that 20 billion in a few months if we owned our mines. How does a country rich in a resource which is about to exceed oil in demand fail to pay 20 billion? seriously, this is annual turnover of some businesses in the west but you get analysts from these countries telling us that we are too poor to pay our way out of debt. I call it witchcraft.
Thanks for highlighting some effects of power outages. It’s a very serious matter. Machines come to a sudden standstill, ventilators cease to operate, lifts can’t run thereby putting lives of miners in danger. But Zesco gives a statement like someone apologizing for passing a fart in public! Do they really understand the consequences of such outages?