Govt In Talks With South Africa's Eskom For 400MW Electricity Deal
Energy and Power Development Minister, Fortune Chasi, said that the government has paid US$10 owed by the country’s power utility, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) to South Africa’s Eskom.
Chasi said that the payment will hopefully allow Eskom to provide 400 megawatts electricity to Zimbabwe to ease the debilitating power cuts.
Addressing the media during a post-cabinet media briefing on Wednesday, Chasi said:
The payment of the US$10 million to Eskom is really the short term measure that we can take to ensure that we have sufficient power and also that we address the load shedding which is at the moment causing a lot of hardships to the public.
I am not at the moment in a position to say what we are going to get from Eskom, we are engaged with them, we have made a significant payment and we should be getting some relief from that quarter.
If we are going to get about 400MW, that would be very good because it is going to deal with the spike in consumption that we experience daily.
Zimbabwe is generating about half of its electricity needs owing to low water levels at Lake Kariba, the site of the country’s reliable power plant.
This has been worsened by the constant breakdown of ageing equipment at Hwange power plant resulting in power cuts of up to 15 hours a day.