Africa-Press – Zambia. PF national chairperson for information and publicity Emmanuel Mwamba has observed that while President Hakainde Hichilema pledged to deliver cheaper fuel he has done the opposite.
In a statement, Mwamba said Zambia is now suffering unprecedented high cost of fuel with no relief in sight.
“While founder president Dr Kenneth Kaunda built the TAZAMA and Indeni refinery as national strategic assets and as solutions to secure reliable fuel to a landlocked country, the new dawn government has abandoned plans to convert Indeni into a full-capacity refinery and have opted to turn the multimillion dollar Indeni Refinery infrastructure into a blender and an ordinary Oil Marketing Company,” he noted.
Mwamba said it is clear that the government has abandoned plans to import crude oil that guaranteed cheaper fuel and utilised both TAZAMA and Indeni to produce various petroleum products that included petrol, diesel, kerosene, heavy oils and bitumen.
He said the sector has been beset by corruption and massive confusion adding that it is now driven by illegal ad-hoc decisions.
“While the UPND blamed the Patriotic Front government for accumulating debt to OMCs, and claimed that fuel was cheaper because the government was not paying its debt, but this government has driven the debt from $400million as at August 2021 to $800million as at June 2024,” he said.
On electricity, Mwamba said when the PF came into power, they executed plans to uprate Zesco generation capacity.
He stated that the PF government invested in upgrading Kariba North Bank, Itezhi-Itezhi, and built a brand new power station, the 750 megawatts Kafue Gorge Lower.
Mwamba recalled that Zesco also upgraded smaller hydro stations such as Lunzua, Lusiwasi, Musonda and Chishimba Falls.
“[PF] government also promoted independent power producers such as Maamba Power Station and IDCs partnership with the private sector where Ngonye and Bangweulu solar companies produced solar power. Zambia’s installed capacity was upgraded from 1,600 megawatts to 3,500 megawatts by August 2021,” he explained. “However, this government has concentrated on signing new export agreements and in many cases detrimental to the development and economic well-being of our country. The recent drought exposed these schemes to an extent that Zambia is suffering the worst load-shedding and power cuts in decades yet Zesco has not halted the huge power exports.”
Mwamba said the damage to households and small and medium enterprises that the power cuts have caused are incalculable.
“Yet what we see from this government is rhetoric and continued poor decisions,” he said. “We also wish to express alarm at the recent Cabinet decision to unbundle Zesco and remove transmission and distribution network infrastructure from Zesco. The so-called Open Access policy will be detrimental to Zesco and to Zambia’s energy security.”
He said “the lie” that this will bring investment in the sector is a tired argument as “we have seen similar decisions made in sectors” as mining where the so-called policies are made to attract foreign investment but leave Zambia more vulnerable and at a loss than before.
“Similarly during the privatisation programme a strategic asset ZCCM’s Power Division was literally given to private entities without proper consideration to public interest. We saw ZCCM’S prized electricity generation, transmission, distribution and supply company, Power Division, sold to the private sector instead of leaving it under the newly created state-owned investment company, ZCCM-IH. This careless decision made for such a strategic asset went to benefit local and foreign individuals but robbed ZCCM-IH of a key strategic investment, future earnings,” said Mwamba. “We therefore call for broad and adequate consultations before any attempts are made to unbundle Zesco. Further, the government has become notorious at ignoring the provisions of Article 210 of the Republican Constitution which requires that any sale, transfer or change of a state-owned company or key strategic national assets, parliament grants two-thirds majority.”
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