Another ZESA scandal

THE Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) bungled its tender for prepaid meters, resulting in the ZESA Holdings subsidiary losing millions of dollars in potential revenue as the system that it eventually adopted is not foolproof.

Power experts revealed to the Financial Gazette that ZETDC’s design engineers erred when they came up with tender specifications that had no sufficient safeguards to protect the adopted system from being tampered with.

The design engineers, according to experts, omitted a tamper switch and an accelerated life testing device as part of the specifications to guard against the loss of revenue resulting from meter tampering.

They said the specifications had elements of convectional metering which are not compatible with prepaid meters. They added that there was a requirement of testing the meter’s functionality when ZETDC had no platform or resources to test the new technology.

Of late, ZETDC — the transmission and distribution arm of ZESA — has been pressuring the State Procurement Board (SPB) to approve a variation on the prepaid meter project to mitigate the loss of revenue.

Delays by the SPB to approve a variation of the project has resulted in companies contracted to install the pre-paid meters namely Solahart, Finmark, ZTE and Nyamazela suffering financial stress due to revenue losses. Consequently, the implementation of the whole pre-paid meter project is now behind schedule.

The project involves changing metering technology for domestic users and small institution from post-paid meters to pre-paid meters. The ZESA subsidiary has been running full page advertisements warning consumers against manipulating the technology.

“If you know someone who has tampered with their meter or is attempting to defraud ZETDC, please report to the nearest police station or ZETDC office,” reads part of the advertisement.

A legal battle has since ensued as a result of the bungling, blamed on the parastatals metering section. The SPB has been dragged to the Administrative Court by a company called BT Critical, which is arguing that the evaluation criteria had some inadequacies.

A recent report claimed that investigations by ZESA had revealed that 4000 properties in mainly upmarket suburbs in Harare had manipulated the meters so that electricity is supplied for free.

The report quoted an acting ZESA spokesperson saying some electricity users had been hauled before the courts for tampering with the meters adding that a revenue protection unit had been established to ensure the integrity of the parastatal’s systems.

In the past few months, ZESA which, is headed by Engineer Josh Chifamba, has been hit by several scandals. Recently, this paper reported that another unit of ZESA, the Zimbabwe Power Company had been drawn into another dispute involving the awarding of a US$183 million solar tender to losing bidders.

It was also reported this month that an executive at the power utility was embroiled in another scandal after he authorised Revma to supply a pre-paid billing platform and meters without going to tender.

ZESA has also been in the news for paying a consultant at one of its subsidiaries huge fees. The consultant has since been shown the door following the intervention by Dzikamai Mavhaire, the Minister of Energy.

newsdesk@fingaz.co.zw