Chronicle Editor
EDITOR – If the Rural Electrification Programme (REA) is what is taking place in Ntabazinduna, the Ministry responsible has to go back to the drawing board.
Instead of uplifting the living standards of the rural people, it is adding more problems to their everyday lives.
We hardly spend two days without having to phone a Zesa office reporting a fault. Sometimes we report a minor fault like a broken cable but we will see technicians coming after three weeks or after a month. Even if the fault is fixed, it will not last long.It will be down again.
To get the technicians back again to sort out the fault will take ages and if one tries to express a point one is told that people in other areas spend longer without electricity.
Now if we compare the money we spend on phoning Zesa offices and that for electricity bills, we find that the latter is cheaper. Truly speaking the year 2018 has been the worst and I think we had about 200 hours of electricity only for the whole year.
When the programme was introduced in our area in the early 1990s it was being done professionally, reported faults were attended to swiftly even in the evenings. Nowadays it is a totally different story. We don’t know what went wrong.
Problems can sometimes be caused by the managers who give jobs to their unqualified and inexperienced relatives. If those mistakes can be rectified, the organisation could get back on its feet again.
If the problem is caused by managers who transfer obsolete equipment from the urban section to the Rural Electrification Programme, this letter serves to make them know that we also pay for electricity just like urban residents.
Finally, we wish the organisation returns to its standards which we used to enjoy and used to be proud of because our children used to go to school in smart and ironed uniforms.
Further, our children had very good breakfast before they left for school because of the electricity which was always available.
I wish the REA management could explain to the people of Ntabazinduna what has caused the slump in standards in the area.
JM Dube Ntabazinduna
Online Reporter