The Sunday News
Vincent Gono in Chiredzi
THE Rural Electrification Fund (REF) has electrified more than 8 000 public institutions in rural areas across the country since 2002 despite the critical electricity shortage the country is facing, a senior official has said.
In an interview in Chiredzi on Tuesday, REF board chairman Mr Willard Chiwewe said he was happy with the progress of the rural electrification programme adding that they intended to finish electrifying all the rural public institutions in the country by 2018.
He said although the 8 000 figure is below set targets, they were content with the progress coming at a time when the country is facing challenges in generating enough power to meet demand.
“I am happy that despite the electricity shortages and other economic challenges that we are facing nationally, we have so far managed to electrify more than 8 000 rural public institutions including chiefs’ homesteads.
“Our target is to have all the rural public institutions such as schools, health centres, business centres and other rural community institutions electrified by 2018. Considering the ground that we have covered, I strongly believe that the target is achievable,” said Mr Chiwewe.
He said REF was committed to electrify rural communities in the country and positively change economically and socially the quality of lives of people.
He noted that there was a lot of excitement in the rural communities that had been electrified.
The enthusiasm, he said, was born from the fact that the rural communities felt economically empowered since they can now engage in self-help projects which were not possible without electricity.
Mr Chiwewe added that the strategy was to electrify the public institutions and chiefs’ homesteads so that communities and individuals could also be served from those focal points.
He said apart from the fact that their speed and visibility was largely determined by the availability of grid electricity, they were also helping communities in their initiatives of having non-grid electricity power such as biogas and solar although those were still very few.
Other challenges that he said REF was facing have to do with transport, acquisition of transformers and cables as well as money to send out personnel to do the surveys.
“Our visibility and speed is to a large extent determined by the availability of grid electricity in the country. You will agree with me that we have been facing electricity challenges for some time now and that greatly affected our speed.
“Our responsibility as REF is to put the infrastructure in place after which we hand it over to Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) that owns the electricity to energise or power the cables.
“In this case we therefore own the infrastructure and ZETDC owns the energy, and that is as far as our relationship goes. In order that we remain sustainable as a fund we are charging a six percent levy for all electricity consumed.
Our role is therefore interventional and have also created a commercial unit where we do poles for sale and we also get business from network providers such as Econet, Telecel and Netone,” he added.
He said REF commonly referred to as the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) was established by an Act of Parliament in the year 2002 following the commercialisation of ZETDC that was now operating on a cost recovery basis.
REF’s mandate is to extend electricity both grid and non-grid to the rural communities in the country after it was noted that rural communities lacked the capacity to pay for the electricity the same way their counterpart in the urban centres were doing.
With REF therefore, communities and individuals are obliged to pay 50 percent of the total installation charge while the other 50 percent is paid by REF in a joint venture sort of approach.
In terms of the capacity to pay for the installed electricity, Mr Chiwewe said the rural communities were paying just like those in the urban areas as most of the communities now have prepaid electricity where the amount one pays was determined by use.
