Power cut chaos hits over a million Bulawayo residents

By Tichaona Sibanda

15 June 2006

Over 1,5 million people across the country’s second largest city of Bulawayo were plunged into confusion and chaos after a huge power cut on Thursday, forcing the city to grind to halt for the first time in many years. Industries were shut down, supermarkets and shops were closed and workers were told to go back home as morning rush-hour traffic became gridlocked. The blackout had hit the city at midnight Wednesday. By midday Thursday most of the city still had no power.

Our correspondent Themba Nkosi said that as the day progressed electricity began to come back in some areas of the city although most was limited backup power. Zesa officials said full restoration would take much longer. Nkosi said Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority officials have blamed the outage on a breakdown of their outdated equipment, which has been in operation for the last half century. But the power cut has exposed the state utility’s battle to supply adequate electricity to its consumers.

The regime in the country will argue that it has moved swiftly to kick start the upgrading of the Hwange power-generating plant in an attempt to forestall criticism of the country’s ailing power network. Two days ago, vice-President Joyce Mujuru, signed a US$1.3 billion deal with China to help relieve an acute shortage of energy. The Herald newspaper said Chinese companies will build new coal mines and three thermal power stations in the Zambezi valley on the Zambian border.

In the last 5 years countless deals have been signed to upgrade the country’s power stations but nothing has ever got off the ground.

An electrical engineer based in the UK said with almost all the domestic electricity production reliant on hydro-electric and coal power stations like Hwange, utilities constructed many years ago, the crisis can only be dealt with by acquiring foreign currency to import new parts.

‘The unprecedented power cut which left Bulawayo in darkness on Wednesday is symptomatic of a growing problem not confined to that city alone. In almost every part of the country, generators have been unable to keep pace with the increasing demand for electricity and with the need to spend money on upgrading outdated infrastructure, the government is surely fighting a lost battle,’ said the engineer.

In Zimbabwe, the rate of power plant construction has failed to keep pace with growing demand, which has been boosted by the rise in the popularity of air-conditioning units and refrigerators.

‘Privatisation of power generation is another way of solving the problem, but with the present government, its obviously a non starter. I won’t be surprised to hear that the whole system has now been compromised and can collapse in a domino effect as each point down the line gets overwhelmed leading to other cities and towns going the same way as Bulawayo,’ the engineer said.