‘LEC on its knees’ – Seleke

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‘LEC on its knees’ – Seleke
‘LEC on its knees’ – Seleke

Africa-PressLesotho. Lesotho Electricity Company (LEC) is heavily owned by its clients. This the LEC Managing Director (MD) Mohato Seleke revealed at a press conference on Wednesday.

The MD said that the utility is owed long time debts to the tune of M265 million. This monies owned to the company he said they threaten the smooth running of the operations of

the company adding that they are avoiding the crisis of effecting load shedding as it happens in the neighbouring South Africa (SA) where they import additional electricity from.

Seleke said when he assumed the directorship, LEC was “on its knees” adding that “when LEC fails the entire economy fails”. “When LEC is healthy the economy will be healthy,” he said.

He mentioned that the electricity imported to supplement LEC is very expensive. LEC buys electricity from ‘Muela Hydro power station which produces 72 megawatts, then imports

supplementary power from South Africa’s Eskom and Mozambique’s Electricidade de Mocambique (EDM). LEC spends about M360 million to procure electricity from Eskom and M120 million from Electricidade

de Mocambique. Seleke said M90 million is owed by the sundry debtors that is the prepaid customers who are small scale clients while M175 million is owned by the post-paid customers who

include government’s ministries, industrialists, embassies, mines and private companies. Earlier in February the utility embarked on a debt collection exercise, a move which the MD said

had borne positive results. Through this exercise he said the utility was able to recover M21 million from the government ministries and M95.6 million from

post-paid clients. Despite the government of Lesotho boasting 100 percent shareholding in LEC, Seleke said the utility is “a profit making institution with a development mandate” adding that the

company achieves this in line with the sound financial principles. The MD appealed for an “earnest” effort from the debtors to settle their outstanding fees.

He said the company does not get subsidies from the government. He mentioned that they faced a “conundrum” where they had to disconnect the electricity but could not

as they had to show “leniency” citing the hospitals which use electricity for critical purposes of preserving lives and the factories which are critical for

the economic growth despite having high utility debts. The MD also stated that going forward they will “strengthen” internal control systems which will ensure

compliance of payments by their clients. Seleke further decried the illegal connections and vandalism which he said they offset the utility. He said during the last financial year, the company spent in excess of M21 million

that was directed at addressing vandalism. Meanwhile, the MD said they will soon lodge their application for the tariffs review with the regulator, the Lesotho Electricity and Water Authority (LEWA) intimating that they are going to apply for the increase.

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