Zesco load sheds Siavonga but…

ZESCO has for the first time included Siavonga on its loads shedding schedule as water levels at Kariba Dam drop to less than 22 percent, the worst in 14 years.

Recently, the power utility, Kariba South Bank Power Station (KNBPS) in Zimbabwe took a similar move which led to protests by residents of the neighbouring town of Kariba.

The protests forced authorities to reverse the decision. According to a source at the KNBPS, Zesco is now only operating two power generating units while another impeccable source at the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) said generation of power at the power station was almost coming to a complete halt. This week during a media tour, Zambezi River Authority (ZRA) senior manager for water resources and environmental management Boniface Mfula said out of the 34 billion cubic liters allocated to power generation for both Zambia and Zimbabwe, only 8.36 billion cubic liters had remained to be consumed by both countries up to December 2019.

On Tuesday residents received text messages informing them of the imminent load-shedding.

According to the load-shedding schedule seen by the Daily Nation, the tourist town will load shed for four hours every day ranging from 05:00 hours to 18:00 hours.

But residents of Siavonga have called on Zesco Limited to shelve its plans to load-shed the tourist town. The residents said in separate interviews the area should be spared from the national load-shedding schedule because it only used less than 10 megawatts of power from the installed capacity of 1,080 being generated in the district.