adminHowever, there is a general feeling among consumers that they do not just pay for the electricity that they would have used but for the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority’s inefficiency. Zesa chief executive Engineer Josh Chifamba told a Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on State Enterprises and Parastatal Management that the parastatal would continue using estimated bills because of the cost involved in having 100 percent meter readings.
Zesa is announcing to the whole nation that it will bill them as it sees fit without regard to how much they consumed because it cannot hire people to read meters that were installed for that purpose. Clearly, this is a scandal by a parastatal whose bills have been disputed by a majority until the Competition and Tariff Commission came to the rescue of the consumers. Should consumers revert to their saviour in the form of the CTC in the wake of the latest announcement, especially in view of the parastatal’s suspect billing system, if it qualifies to called one?
We are, however, happy that Zesa has abandoned all pretence and declared that it was incapable of reading its meters and would therefore rely on guess work. We wonder, however, what happened to the project to introduce a pre-payment system so that we forget about the billing nightmares and meter reading headaches.
The pre-payment system would be ideal for many people since it would ensure that nobody accumulates bills though it gives an unfair advantage to Zesa that will receive money in advance without any guarantee that it would provide satisfactory service.
Bulawayo businesspeople have justifiably raised concern over the failure by Zesa to read meters saying consumers could not be punished for Zesa’s failures. We share the businesspeople’s concern and urge Zesa to put its house in order in as far as meter reading and billing are concerned. Infact, many consumers would willingly give their correct readings to Zesa if only they were assured of proper billing.
ZNCC regional vice-president Sheila Sidambe put it aptly when she said: “We cannot work on estimated bills as they are not accurate at all. Zesa is actually destroying our industry as we are paying for what we never used.”
We would like to urge Zesa to speed up its rollout of the pre-payment system so that the issue of contested bills is dealt with once and for all. Consumers eagerly await the pre-payment meters and it comes as a shock to them that Zesa is actually planning to continue burdening them with estimated bills at a time when consumers were expecting a new convenient system that would help them manage their expenditure on power.
The continued use of estimates would make consumers suspect that Zesa had no intention of moving to a better system since it was benefiting from the inefficiencies associated with the current system whose estimates have left many in debt.
Online Reporter