Cabinet was yesterday seized with the prevailing electricity challenges afflicting Zimbabwe, with remedies expected to be announced and rolled out soon, acting Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Jenfan Muswere has said.
Zimbabwe is presently facing acute power shortages which
have seen consumers going for long hours, outside the normal load-shedding
periods without electricity.
The situation, caused by frequent breakdowns at Hwange
Thermal Station, has been compounded by the water shortages in Kariba Dam which
provides the bulk of Zimbabwe’s electricity supplies.
The Zambezi River Authority (ZRA) which runs the Kariba
Dam, wrote to the Zimbabwe Power Company last week directing it to stop
generating electricity until at least January, when water levels are expected
to have picked up.
“With the current performance of the 2022/2023 rainfall
season in the Kariba Lower Catchment where the river flows are yet to improve
and the associated inflows from the Upper Kariba Catchment which will only
influence any potential increase in the Lake Level at Kariba during the later
part of the first quarter of 2023, it is highly unlikely that there will be any
reasonable inflow augmentation in the remaining period of the year 2022, giving
little or no chance of improvement in the reservoir storage levels during the
remaining period of the year 2022 and going into the first quarter of the year
2023,” ZRA CEO Munyaradzi Munodawafa said in the letter.
In light of that, acting Information, Publicity and
Broadcasting Services Minister Muswere said government was seized with finding
solutions.
“Cabinet deliberated on the issue of Zimbabwe’s energy and
power supply.
A detailed statement on the matter will be issued by the
Minister of Energy and Power Development, Honourable Zhemu Soda, as soon as
consultations are finalised,” he said in a post Cabinet briefing.
Part of the solutions likely being looked at by the Government
include, securing more imports from regional countries and expediting the
completion of the Hwange 7 and 8 expansion project.
Last week, the first of the two units being built at the
Hwange power station was successfully turned on for the first time, bringing
the country closer to producing an additional 300 Megawatts.
The additional power is expected to be fed into the
national grid before the end of the year and will go a long way in easing power
shortages.
When complete, the two units, Hwange 7 and 8, are expected
to produce a total of 600 megawatts. Several independent power producers are at
various stages of implementing their projects. — New Ziana
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