Residents rap Zesa over blackouts

BULAWAYO residents have rapped the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC), a subsidiary of Zesa Holdings, for its failure to attend to faults.

The situation has resulted in some Bulawayo suburbs spending six months without power supplies.

Residents told Southern Eye that ZETDC was taking more than two months to fix faults.

One of the most affected suburbs is Iminyela, and residents said they had to contribute money to have the electricity problem rectified after ZETDC workers took ages to attend to it.

Residents’ representative Wilson Dube said even after approaching the ZETDC, the fault was not attended to.

“After about four weeks without power, the ZETDC workers came and told us that our transformer had exploded. We were told to contribute US$1 per household. After that, they came back to fix the fault. However, after a few, days they informed us that the transformer had broken down again,” Dube said.

“The second transformer broke down in July and residents could not afford to purchase a replacement as it was expensive. Failure to repair the faults places residents at risk as crime rates increase,” he said.

A Queens Park East resident Nomazulu Ndlovu also told Southern Eye that they spent almost six weeks without electricity after a fault occurred.

“We then tried to call ZETDC offices using different numbers to report the fault. No one was picking up their calls. There was no assistance even after we went to report the fault physically,” Ndlovu said, adding that they had to endure six weeks without electricity.

Embankment residents said they spent about a year without power after the heavy rains destroyed their transformer last year.

Zesa Holdings western region acting general manager Lloyd Jaji declined to comment and referred Southern Eye to the general manager Lovemore Chinaka, who was not answering calls.