There was a power outage at a leading Victoria Falls hotel
on Thursday, just a minute before President Emmerson Mnangagwa was due to
address delegates at the ongoing Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC)
congress.
A generator was switched on some 30 seconds after the
blackout. "It was a strange moment and we all kept quiet as the hotel
authorities tried to salvage the situation," said a delegate at the
conference, hosted by Elephant Hills.
When power was restored, the president was ushered to the
podium by industry minister Mangaliso Ndlovu.
Zimbabwe is back at stage 2 power cuts, which result in
some parts of the country only receiving electricity eight hours a day. The
shortage is due to a fault at the Hwange Thermal Power Station, 100km south of
Victoria Falls.
Energy minister Fortune Chasi told journalists following a
cabinet meeting on Wednesday that the government had taken over the Zimbabwe
Electricity Supply Authority's (ZESA's) debt to South Africa’s Eskom. Payment
of the debt would unlock 400MW of electricity.
At present, Eskom is providing only 50MW because of Zesa’s
failure to service its debt. “The payment of the US$10m to Eskom is really the
short-term measure that we can take to ensure that we have sufficient power and
also that we address the load-shedding which is at the moment causing a lot of
hardships to the public,” the minister said.
He added that the significant payment should help improve
the situation because winter had peak energy demands.
"If we are going to get about 400MW, that would be
very good because it is going to deal with the spike in consumption that we
experience daily," he said.
Mnangagwa has also engaged Mozambique over the payment of
money owned to Cahora Bassa. Times
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