The Sunday Mail
Noah Pito – Extra Correspondent
On September 4, 2014 President Robert Mugabe commissioned the Kariba South Power Extension Project, which is expected to add 300MW to the national grid by 2017.
During the ground-breaking occasion, the President said projects like the Kariba Power Station Extension were an integral part of Government’s goal towards an empowered society and a growing economy.
He said adequate power supply infrastructure, not only helped attract investors to the country but also brought electricity to rural areas, which also improved the quality of life for the rural people.
President Mugabe added that such projects did not merely bring power into the homes and workplaces, but they also empowered the people of Zimbabwe in general.
Barely two weeks after the commissioning of the project, rural folk in the Kapfunde area of Hurungwe, Mashonaland West Province suddenly saw themselves benefiting from the power project in a manner they had never imagined.
In fact, fortune smiled at the Kapfunde folks after the Zimbabwe Power Corporation (ZPC) identified their heavily silted Badze River as a prime source of river sand for constructing the two power-generating units at the project.
ZPC went on to sign a deal with Hurungwe Rural District Council in which the former offered to purchase 15 000 cubic metres of the resource from the area.
In an interview recently, Hurungwe Rural District Council chief executive officer Mr Joram Moyo confirmed the deal saying all the cash realised from the sale of the resource was being channelled towards developing the Kapfunde community.
“Yes, we signed a deal with ZPC in which we are in the process of supplying them with a total of 15000 cubic metres of river sand from heavily silted Badze River.
“They are buying the sand at a price of US$7 per cubic metre. About US$100 000 to be realised from the sale of the sand will all be channelled towards servicing roads and upgrading schools in the area while a small portion of the earnings shall be devoted to environmental awareness in the area.
“Apart from the current rehabilitation of roads being carried out in the area by ZPC as a goodwill gesture to Kapfunde, council has also employed two villagers from the community whose duties are to record and monitor the trucks as they load and leave for Kariba.
“The community has already started benefiting the locals before we start looking at the proceeds from the sale of the resource.
“Excavation of the sand from Badze (River) has also since solved the water problems caused by siltation over the years. Water is now back in the river whose bed used to go dry even during rainy seasons.
“The fact that Badze River has over the years been choked by tonnes of sand is a clear sign that villagers in the area also need to be educated in terms of environmental management. That’s the reason why we are devoting part of the proceeds from the sale of the sand towards environmental awareness.
“Council personnel is thus already in the area educating the villagers on farming methods that mitigate siltation in rivers. We are in fact reminding the villagers that benefits realized from the sale of the river sand should never motivate them into creating more siltation, for having such huge amounts of sand in rivers should never be by design but by accident,” warned Mr Moyo.
Ward 12 councillor Fainos Tarima, under whose jurisdiction the area falls, said the Kariba South Power Project had brought relief to the area particularly in terms of the water shortages that had dogged the area for years.
“Since the start of the sand excavation in September last year water is no longer a problem to our people.
“People are now re-establishing their vegetable gardens which they had long abandoned. The power project at Kariba has in fact transformed the lives of our people here.
“People in the area no longer travel distances of more than 10 kilometres to Zvarayi to water their cattle as they used to do previously.
“Even tobacco farmers who previously travelled long distances hunting for water with drums to save their wilting nurseries every September and October, never encountered any problems last year as water became available soon after the Kariba Project kicked off,” he said.
Mr Tarima added that apart from benefits that the area was getting through council from the sale of the sand, the Kapfunde people had their living standards already improved nutritionally since they have since started re-establishing their gardening projects using the available water.
However one of the village heads in the area Mr Charles Chiyangwa still feels ZPC needs to do more for the community especially by engaging at least 10 people from the area to work at the Kariba Project in reciprocation to the vital resource the area was offering.
“As a thank you gesture for our indigenous resource they are shipping to Kariba for the national project, I think ZPC should go a step further and employ at least 10 of our people.
“We have builders, drivers, carpenters et cetera etcetera all lying idle here. This sand must be considered as our diamond from which we must benefit the same way those in Chiadzwa are benefiting from their stones,” he said.
The Kariba South Power Extension project entails construction of an additional two 150MW power generating units to complement the current six 125MW generating units.
This is set to increase the total capacity at the Kariba Hydro Power Station from 750MW to 1 050MW.
The additional capacity will serve the peak demand, significantly reducing the obtaining load shedding that the country is experiencing.
The US$320 million loan extended by the Chinese government made the project a reality with the Zimbabwe Power Company also chipping in with US$213 million borrowed from Development Finance Institutions.
