The pledge, made through an emergency rehabilitation project to be managed by the African Development Bank, is part of Western donors’ support to Zimbabwe’s Short Term Emergency Recovery Programme unveiled soon after the formation of the coalition government two years ago.
The project is financed from the Zimbabwe Multi-Donor Trust Fund, set up in May 2010 by Australia, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the ADB to support the people of Zimbabwe.
The project aims to increase access to affordable and reliable electricity supply at competitive prices through the implementation of an emergency power infrastructure rehabilitation programme.
Zimbabwe has experienced rolling power cuts during the past decade due to inadequate generation capacity by ZESA.
This has seen ZESA implementing a load management programme under which the utility regularly switches off some customers during the day in order to stretch the available supplies.
The daily power cuts have affected domestic consumers as well as the business community, with some factories forced to retrench workers due to low production.
The project will facilitate the provision of adequate and reliable power supply in an environmentally sound manner through the rehabilitation of the ash plant at HPS and the sub-transmission and distribution facilities.
“The rehabilitation of the ash plant will therefore mitigate the ash build-up, hence ensure availability of the operating plants. Service will also be restored to part of the 22 000 customers that have been discontinued due to lack of maintenance and vandalism,” said the ADB in a project document seen by The Zimbabwean.
The project is expected to complement an existing emergency water supply and sanitation rehabilitation project also financed by the Zim-Fund by helping improve the reliability of electricity supply to the treatment plant of the Harare city water supply and other urban water supply systems in Chegutu, Chitungwiza, Kwekwe, Masvingo and Mutare.
Most of the water supply in Harare depends heavily on power-consuming treatment plants.
Post published in: Zimbabwe News