Zesa mulls new billing

By Zvamaida Murwirwa
ZESA Holdings has hired a consultancy firm to assess if the parastatal should use pre-paid or smart card metering to improve revenue collection.
Zesa chief executive Engineer Josh Chifamba disclosed this as he gave oral evidence before the House of Assembly Portfolio Committee on Parastatals and State Enterprises.
The committee is chaired by Zvishavane-Runde Member of House of Assembly, Cde Larry Mavima (Zanu-PF).
Engineer Chifamba said: “The pre-paid system is not only advantageous to us but to our customers.
“They have better control of their electricity, they know the amount of electricity they have, the same way they know how much mealie-meal is left, the amount of petrol they have, unlike the present situation where the bill comes as a shocker,” he said.
“The smart metre and pre-paid system work the same way but the smart card is ‘smarter’ than the pre-paid system because you can load-shed yourself without having to get arbitrary load-shedding.
“You can do a lot of things, albeit at a higher price and you need to make a cost benefit analysis.”
The committee asked the Zesa boss to respond to allegations that Energy and Power Development Minister Elton Mangoma interfered with Government’s Tender Board when the parastatal asked for tenders for the pre-paid metering service.
“During the process of adjudication, there was intervention by the Minister, who asked ZETD to review the tender and see whether it was possible to change the technology and switch to smart card, which was also Zesa’s view,” he said.
The committee asked why Zesa wanted to hike tariffs by 30 percent.
Eng Chifamba said it was difficult for Zesa to secure funding locally or abroad and they relied on revenue generation.
On winter wheat, he said Zesa had an agreement with farmers’ organisations so that they pay their electricity bills after selling their crop.
“We are quite alive to the needs of the farmers. We are actually taking a business risk,” he said.