Business sector bemoans power outages

CZI president Callisto Jokonya called for urgent action to end power shortages as a massive outage – the third since Saturday – plunged Zimbabwe into darkness including the capital Harare for much of yesterday.   The electricity issue is serious. It needs to be sorted out as a matter of urgency because as we speak now there is no production taking place in the manufacturing sector and industry is losing out, said Jokonya, speaking to ZimOnline moments before power was restored to most parts of Harare around 2.30pm. Jokonya, who said industry has not been able to run meaningfully since Saturday, did not quantify the losses that could have been incurred by the manufacturing sector so far. The capital had not had electricity since early in the morning bringing business to a virtual standstill. The Internet was down across the country because the main servers are in Harare. Mobile phones were largely not working and many callers had to rely on the state’s archaic and perennially congested fixed phone network. Zimbabwe has faced power shortages since the economic crisis accelerated in 2000 with the government’s Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) blaming the problem on lack of foreign currency to expand generation capacity or to buy parts for existing power stations. But this is the fist time that the nation has faced power failures across the country. ZESA has blamed power failures on what it says was system disturbance on the interconnecting grid that links southern African countries to a common grid. Power failures have also been experienced in Zambia and Botswana. However, for long-suffering Zimbabweans, the electricity cuts are only an addition on a long list of hardships bedevelling the country in the grip of economic meltdown critics blame on repression and wrong policies by President Robert Mugabe. Mugabe, in power since Zimbabwe’s 1980 independence from Britain and seeking another five-year term in elections in March, denies ruining Zimbabwe and instead blames his country’s problems on sabotage by Western governments he says are out to topple him.