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stolen.
The affected farms are Nengwa, Welcome Home, Denby and Innsfree.
The farmers who are already counting their losses have gone for nearly a month without electricity.
The crop is now losing out to the dry conditions and frost while in some areas the planted crop failed to germinate due to lack of adequate moisture.
Affected farmer, Mr Simon Mawangure, said on Wednesday that the situation was hopeless, as the farmers could not afford to use generators for irrigation to save their crop.
“We have gone for nearly a month without electricity and the crop is now a write off. We reported the case to Zesa Holdings, but we have not received any help since the authority is taking time to address the problem,” he said.
The farmers said when they reported the case, Zesa officials only came to assess but never delivered the promises of rectifying the problem.
“We spent two weeks after reporting the first theft incident without the authority responding. The thieves came back and stole the remaining cable and now we are grounded,” Mr Mawarura said. Another Nengwa farmer, Mr Nyasha Mangena, said it was disturbing that Zesa was taking time to act when wheat was a strategic crop that required urgent attention.
“A fellow farmer, Richard Mudehwe offered us his cable so that we could save our crop but Zesa officials refused to connect it.
“We identified some cables that were not in use and informed the authority, which also promised to come and replace the cables, but did not come,” Mr Mangena said.
Mr Mangena said the affected farmers had done all their best to save their crop from wilting and frost but this was failing to materialise. Mr Mangena said the farmers organised transport to collect Zesa officials and the cables but the later refused as the equipment was not allowed to be transported using private vehicles.
The farmers said this was sabotage by Zesa officials to discourage farmers from producing wheat.
“We have now become a laughing stock as many people mock us for wasting resources by producing the crop,” complained Mr Mangena.
The farmers recently lost five hectares of potatoes and three hectares of tomatoes to frost due. A dairy farmer in the area is now relying on generators for his activities and this is proving to be very expensive. Innsfree dairy farm manager, Mr Johanne London, said all dairy activities heavily depended on electricity and the farm was now using 40 litres of fuel every day.
“The cold rooms should always be running otherwise we will have huge losses,” he said.
At Nengwa Farm, farm workers are now drinking from unprotected water sources, as their water pump is down.
This is exposing them to health hazards and they are afraid of a cholera outbreak. Some wheat farmers in the area who were not affected by the vandalism of the electricity cables complained of constant power cuts, which were disrupting irrigation activities. The farmers complained that Zesa holdings had assured them of minimum load shedding but this was the opposite of what was happening.
Zesa public relations manager, Mr Fullard Gwasira, said the company was looking into the matter.
“It is very important that farmers appreciate that replacement of equipment requires funds. The reason why customers feel we are not responding to faults is because of challenges. We do not have enough resources,” he said.
Mr Gwasira said Zesa supported the land reform programme and wheat production. He said vandalism of electricity cables was happening at high frequency with the company failing to cope with replacement demand.
“It is also in the interest of protecting infrastructure that we only want electricity cables to be transported only by Zesa vehicles,” he said. Wheat production has been on the downfall due to lack of funding and the constant power cuts. Some farmers have resorted to switching to other crops that do not heavily depend on irrigation to reduce losses.
So far, more than 10 000 hectares of wheat have been planted.
Online Reporter