Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. President Emmerson Mnangagwa Wednesday expressed disappointment with the local power utility, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) after power cuts disrupted his speech in the presence of international guests.
There was an abrupt power outage which interrupted his speech during the ground-breaking ceremony of the Cyber City in Mt Hampden, according to NewsDay Zimbabwe.
Mnangagwa, who was in the company of Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga and billionaire investor Nawab Shaji Ul Mulk, chairman of Mulk International, had to wait for three minutes as officials made frantic efforts to restore power. He said when power was eventually restored:
This is very humiliating. The guys at Zesa do not know the time to do their power cuts. They cannot have their load shedding when we have guests like this.
The southern African country has in the past two years expressed serious power shortages that prompted the power utility to roll out prolonged load shedding schedules. At the height of the crisis, some parts of the country going for 18 hours without power.
On Tuesday, Energy and Power Development minister Zhemu Soda warned that the country might endure rolling power cuts beyond August due to depressed generation capacity.
His remarks followed a notice by ZESA issued last week which warned of prolonged power outages.
Zimbabwe requires 2 000 megawatts (MW) of electricity monthly to meet power demand but has been failing to generate enough.
Imports of 500 MW from Mozambique’s Hydro Cahora Bassa and 400MW from South Africa’s ESKOM are still inadequate to close the supply gap.
Soda said the government was making frantic efforts to ease the power cuts through imports and rehabilitation of the Hwange Thermal Power Station.
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