The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo Senior Business Reporter
THE Bulawayo City Council has all but given up on its quest to repossess the Bulawayo thermal power station from the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) citing the cumbersome process of repealing the binding legislation and lack of funding to operate the plant. In an interview with Sunday Business after a breakfast meeting between local businesspeople and officials from the council on Tuesday, Mayor Councillor Martin Moyo said although the power station was constructed by the local authority using money from ratepayers, taking it over was going to be an insurmountable task legally and even if the council succeeded, it was still going to struggle to raise the money needed to recapitalise the plant.
The Bulawayo thermal power became part of Zesa in 1987 after the amalgamation of all the Local Authority electricity undertakings.
“We can’t stop people from clamouring about repossessing the power station because it belongs to them but we have to consider that it went to Zesa because of an Act and that Act has to be first of all repealed and that’s no easy task.
“It’s quite a sensitive issue of saying we want the power station back. It really raises emotions. However, we need to also consider how much we will need in terms of recapitalisation and if we are going to afford to rehabilitate the obsolete infrastructure,” Clr Moyo said.
He said the power station was handed over to Zesa without payment for the infrastructure.
“So literally the power station still belongs to BCC. However, it has not been fully utilised for some time and when we continue to have these incessant power load-shedding emotions tend to rise because most people would think we would have been able to operate it effectively,” Clr Moyo said.
Bulawayo power station is one of the three small thermal power stations in the country with the other two being Harare and Munyati. The power plants have a combined nominal capacity of 270 megawatts.
In the last few years the thermal power stations have only been producing part or no electricity due to coal shortages and maintenance neglect.
Botswana Power Corporation and Namibia’s NamPower in 2009 made agreements to help Zesa revive the capacity in exchange for power deliveries.
Clr Moyo, meanwhile, took a swipe at Zesa for failing to pay annual royalties for the use of the power station.
“If you have something which someone is using you have to be paid unless if you have donated. We don’t seem to be deriving anything from the power station and those are sentiments which trigger people to want us to take the infrastructure back.
“Zesa owes us more in terms of royalties than we owe them so we are working on an arrangement where we will offset each other’s debts but perhaps it’s a decision which can’t be dealt with at a local level but already Zesa seems not to be satisfied with our calculations,” Clr Moyo said.
He said the power utility owed the local authority more than $62 million in royalties against a background whereby BCC has an outstanding electricity bill of over $40 million.
BCC is splashing about 300 litres of diesel worth about $400 daily to operate a generator which powers Tower Block and Revenue Hall which were switched off by the Zesa over unpaid bills in 2010.
Rough calculations by Sunday Business have shown that BCC is using about $101 376 annually on fuel for the generator, translating to about $405 405 for the past four years that the local authority has been without electricity.
“The relationship between us and Zesa should be based on mutual respect and mutual beneficiation. For instance we have to pay $1,2 million a month for pumping water at our criterion water works. This expense builds up into resident’s water bills,” Clr Moyo said.
Bulawayo United Residents’ Association chairperson Mr Winos Dube added that although residents preferred the council to run the power station they doubted the capacity since it was already struggling to offer other cheap services.
“Council is struggling to meet service delivery in a number of ways so I doubt if it has the capacity to generate electricity with the financial challenges it is facing. All we want is adequate power supplies to the citizens.
“We have, however, noted with concern that these two service providers are at each other’s neck over payment of debts but we are urging BCC to take the same aggressive stance it does to residents who fail to pay their rates because as citizens we demand better services,” Mr Dube said.
It has been reported that Zesa has once again roped in NamPower to provide funding for the rehabilitation of its small thermal power stations, Bulawayo included.
