The Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) is owed ZWL$14 billion (about US$20 million at the official rate) by its customers.
This was said by Deputy Energy and Power Development Minister Magna Mudyiwa in the Senate on Thursday while responding to questions on the current power crisis.
Mudyiwa said ZESA introduced prepaid meters because people were not paying their bills. She said:
People would (use) as much electricity as they wanted and would not pay up. For your information, ZESA is owed about $14 billion right now.
ZESA is not getting any funding from the government for its operations. It is a company that is supposed to run on its own just like any other company.
It is supposed to buy equipment (such as) vehicles that are used when attending to faults.
They are supposed to procure fuel and are not getting forex because many people are paying in Zimbabwe dollars.
ZESA is supposed to pay its workers. You might have heard that there is a lot of brain drain that took place at ZESA and a lot of professionals left this country and went as far as UK and Australia and ZESA is supposed to pay its workers adequately – all that is not happening because ZESA is owed a lot of money by consumers.
All these units that we are using at Hwange need revamping, they are very old and need rehabilitation but there is no money because ZESA is owed more than (14) billion dollars.
Zimbabwe is facing one of its worst power crises due to depressed generation at its power plants resulting from low water levels in the case of Kariba, and recurrent breakdowns and coal shortages at its coal-fired power stations.
On 09 December 2022, the Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC) was generating a total of 438MW from its five power stations.
Hwange was generating 218MW, Kariba 200, Bulawayo 20, Harare 0MW and Munyati 0MW.
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