Africa-Press – Tanzania. RECENTLY, Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO) customers, including traders found themselves in a difficult situation following the collapse of what can simply be termed as pre-paid electronic power purchase system (LUKU).
The situation that lasted for about three days caused untold inconvenience to the customers as some were forced to live without power in their houses and business stalls, disrupting business while denying the government of its rightful revenue.
The situation left many questions unanswered with regard to the commitment of power utility officials, especially individuals at the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) department in providing quality services to the customers.
Apart from the losses caused by the system outage, customers spent most of their productive time moving from one point to another (in urban areas), searching for the service, further impacting negatively the country’s economy.
As Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said when he met the Tanesco Board of Directors, it is inconceivable for an important firm such as Tanesco to have no back up system that may come into rescue when an ordinary system goes down.
Tanesco is such an important organisation that requires strict supervision that is why it is compulsory to inspect the firm’s equipment and system every day to ensure that the service is available all the time.
The level of laxity and negligence that occurred at Tanesco should never be tolerated.
This is the reason we support the order issued by the government through the Prime Minister of suspending indefinitely individuals, who in one way or another, were allegedly involved in the recent mess until investigations are complete.
Tanesco officials must be reminded that electricity is a major contributor to the nation’s economic development.
It is the wheel that drives most aspects of everyday life in society. Electricity is the source of energy for so many sectors of an economy and improves the standard of living of the people in the country.
In that sense, what happened at Tanesco should never recur and we believe what happened served a lesson to them.
In short, Taneso officials must go back to the drawing board to see how best to improve their service provision systems.
