The Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) continues to issue exorbitant tariffs to residents, that are way beyond what they earn and bear no relation to what they actually consume. On Wednesday and Thursday last week, ZESA officials in Marondera went door to door disconnecting electricity from a number of homes. Many of the residents earn allowances of just US$100 and yet aMarondera based author Cathy Buckle told SW Radio Africa that this is also in spite of the fact that residents have not received electricity bills for some months and the electricity metre has not been read for over a year.
Buckle said Marondera has been crippled by the power cuts. She said many people have been trying to pay bit by bit and were still trying to raise the $10 needed for re-connection. She said Thursday was the coldest day of winter so far, but there was no warning and no mercy from the ZESA people who came to switch off electricity from desperate residents.
Buckle says the word being used on the street in her neighborhood is “Murambatsvina,” with people comparing the cruelty of events to the government’s massive urban evictions of mid winter 2005.
The author of the weekly column Letter from Zimbabwe said: In the road where I live, 90% of homes were disconnected on a freezing July afternoon. The picture was repeated across town. Families with babies in the house were not spared; homes with sick and disabled occupants were switched off; homes with elderly people in their 90’s were disconnected. There was no mercy or compassion, no compromise or humanity – just like it had been in Operation Murambatsvina.
Marondera’s Mayor Farai Nyandoro denied that this was happening. He told SW Radio Africa on Tuesday that there is a power problem in Marondera at the moment, but it’s a transformer problem.
But Buckle maintains that the situation is more than the issue of a transformer problem She said ZESA officials were seen going door to door, in pairs, physically disconnecting power from people who had failed to pay their bills. Only those who have been able to pay are being reconnected.
Last month Energy and Power Minister Elias Mudzuri told SW Radio Africa residents were being asked to pay uniform rates of between US$30 and US$40 per month. He said since February, when they started the system, most residents have not been paying and ZESA was saddled with a US$60 million power import bill that needed to be paid. He warned that the country was on the verge of being cut off by those supplying it with electricity.
Post published in: World News