ZESA to reduce power outages in next few weeks

HARARE: ZESA has promised that electricity load shedding will be reduced significantly in the next few weeks.

The company’s CEO Engineer Patrick Chivaura said  Zesa has met all the preconditions which had been set by Eskom for the resumption of power. This included an additional, US$890 000 payment to Eskom which went towards debt clearance.

In an interview with the state media, Chivaura said,

RBZ paid US$890 000 to Eskom for the liquidation of the debt that we have. Eskom asked us to meet certain conditions before the resumption of power supply to the country. I am happy to announce that we have met the conditions and we are looking forward to providing a bank guarantee by Tuesday. This will initialise the process of power supply by Eskom. I am very confident that the deal will materialise by next week.

Once the deal materialises, we are expecting it to significantly reduce load-shedding. We will have power for more hours than we are having now.

Chivaura also said that the power utility was negotiating with its Mozambican counterpart Hydro Cahora Basa for the supply of more electricity.

We are also engaging HCB to see if we can liquidate their debt and also to see if we can import more electricity from them. We owe them a lot of money and we want to see how best we can settle that debt and start getting more power from them