admin
Another company, Finmark says it has capacity to install as many as 1 000 meters a day but was limited by ZETDC’s inability to capture all the newly installed meters in its database.
Speaking after a site visit in Norton last week, ZETDC managing director Mr Julian Chinembiri said he was pleased with the rate at which the project was progressing in the town as most of the residential areas had been covered. He expressed optimism that the target to install up to 600 000 prepaid meters for the power utility’s customers countrywide would be achieved by August this year.
“We have covered a lot of ground so far and it has put us in a stronger position as a power utility and considering that the people are no longer paying their bills in retrospect but are paying in advance. We are lagging behind a bit in Harare and Bulawayo but there has been steady progress elsewhere,” Mr Chinembiri said.
Four companies – Solhart, Finmark, Nyamezela and ZTE – were awarded the tender to supply and install the prepaid meters last year and have been operating in various parts of the country.
There has been concern, however, regarding the slow rollout of prepaid meters in Harare and Bulawayo a situation the ZETDC boss said was being addressed. Finmark managing director Mr Clint Mtungwazi said that his company was mounting prepaid meters on electricity poles to reduce tampering of the meters by consumers.
Each box mounted on an electricity pole housed four meters for adjacent households who use hand-held devices to recharge their energy supplies.
“We decided to have pole-mounted meter boxes as our own initiative to reduce tampering with the meters and effective service delivery. We have been progressing smoothly and given the resources we can install up to 1 000 meters per day, yes, we can do that,” he said at the installation site in Katanga high-density suburb.
Asked whether the company had the capacity to run two major projects – the prepaid meters and energy saver bulbs – at the same time,
Mr Chinembiri said the bulbs had already been paid for and the prepaid meters were financed by an Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe loan.
On the choice of areas that were prioritised for prepaid meter installation, Mr Chinembiri said that this was based on the assessment of high risk of losses while new installations immediately went onto the prepaid platform.
He expressed concern over the high number of people bypassing electricity meters through parallel connections resulting in huge losses for the power utility.
Although he could not give exact figures, Mr Chinembiri said that the revenue collection system had vastly improved since the prepaid meters were introduced.
Online Reporter