Editorial Comment: Zesa should cover live cables to avoid tragedies

unprotected by Zesa during repairs.
Despite that avoidable tragedy, we still find this week exposed work in progress left open, without any protection, in Harare city centre and, we suspect, several other places.
Zesa has no excuse for this.
The utility ensures that all sub-stations are properly locked, partly to prevent theft but also to ensure that no one can wander into them and be hurt or killed by the equipment inside. Zesa also has fail-safe technology with its overhead wires. When poles fall down, cables break or falling debris connect the wires to the ground the systems immediately cut power.
Consumers may be irritated when their power goes after a truck rams a post nearby, but they should also realise that this is a standard safety precaution, the automatic cut of current.
Every homeowner who has had wiring installed in a new house, or had wiring redone in an old house, knows that Zesa inspectors are thorough in their examinations of the work done and refuse to have the house supplied with power until they are satisfied that all work has been done properly.
This same fanaticism over safety is now needed for Zesa’s own works. It might well take more than one day to do some repairs, and there are often good reasons why power needs to be restored before these repairs are buried once again.
But we cannot see why they should be left exposed where a child, or an adult for that matter, can easily climb in, or fall in, touch the exposed cables and die.
Surely, some sort of portable cover can be designed and made,, which maintenance teams could place over their work, and surely holes dug to reach the cables can be fenced off with portable sections of railing.
Warning notices would also be useful, but these cannot be relied upon. What is needed is a physical barrier so that the curious and the careless cannot be hurt.
Like everyone else who creates a danger, Zesa have legal liability for what they do. Civil law is quite solid on responsibilities accrued by those who create circumstances which a reasonable man would recognise could lead to injury or death. In certain circumstances creating a danger can also be a criminal offence.
Of course many of those exposed to such dangers cannot afford to go through long legal processes to sue Zesa for damages or obtain injunctions. Zimbabwe does not allow lawyers to work on contingency fees, charging nothing up front but taking a steep percentage of the resulting damages in a successful suit.
This is where some of these legal NGOs could do some very useful work in helping out those who normally cannot afford legal advice. Once Zesa is hit by law suits the utility might take its own safety more seriously.
Zesa has enough expertise within its own ranks to devise equipment or procedures that make repairs in progress safe. It should have this done immediately.