Zesa board ready to wield the axe

Africa Moyo
Senior Business Reporter

The new Zesa Holdings board says it is sharpening its swords for a brutal fight against misgovernance at the State-owned power utility, especially alleged corruption in tender awards and nepotism.

Further, the new board, led by former Cottco managing director Mr Collins Chihuri, plans to ensure stable and consistent power supplies.

The board, which would sign performance contracts, also intends to successfully complete electricity generation projects currently underway such as the US$1,4 billion Hwange Power Station Expansion, which will add 600MW to the grid.

Government appointed a seven-member board for Zesa on March 19, made up of Engineer Benson Munyaradzi, Ms Jacqueline Sande, Mr Trust Chifamba, Mr Hussein Omar, Mrs Cathrine Befura and Mr Thomas Timire.

On the day of appointment, Energy and Power Development Minister Dr Joram Gumbo, said the board has several tasks that include superintending over the re-bundling process of Zesa, eliminating corruption and completing ongoing power projects.

Mr Chihuri told The Sunday Mail Business that while the task awaiting them at Zesa is gigantic, it would only be overcame if all members pulled in the same direction.

“Certainly as the minister said, there are great challenges but the challenges are not insurmountable as long as we put in good effort,” said Mr Chihuri.

He promised that the new board will hit the ground running, and largely look at ensuring that power is available for both domestic and commercial consumers. Zimbabwe has not had load shedding since December 2015 mainly due to investments in new energy projects and refurbishments of existing infrastructure, particularly since 2009.

“We will certainly look at making power availability a core issue. Since 2015 there have been no challenges, so it’s one aspect we have to ensure that it’s maintained.

“There are also big projects underway, and our task is to ensure that we support them. We also have to look at corruption and other governance shortcomings. Certainly, we have to look at such issues. So it’s a big task but we are equal to the task,” said Mr Chihuri.

Tackling corruption will test the resolve of the new board to the limit.

Zesa has had the tag of having the “most corrupt” officials stuck on it for a long time.

Management has previously been accused of offering themselves humongous salaries and perquisites (incidental benefits) even at a time when the entity was not operating profitably and efficiently.

There have also been unconfirmed reports of management colluding with board members to corruptly award tenders either to their “friends” or companies that are amenable to paying kick-backs.

This has adversely affected the power utility’s operations, resulting in it turning to Government for financial assistance. But Mr Chihuri says the board will have to look at itself in the mirror, and ensure they operate above board.

“As a board, we have to be clean individuals and I have always said you can’t legislate for integrity. Those are some of the issues we want to fight.

“For me, integrity is key. We just have to come in and drive our members to ensure that we have a clean team throughout,” said Mr Chihuri.

Asked how they plan to roll-out their activities, Mr Chihuri said: “We have just been appointed and we should have plans in the next few weeks or a month on how we are going to execute our mandate.

“For now, we have just come in, we need to see the business, where the business was and then we will be able to take a trajectory going forward.”

In line with the Transitional Stabilisation Plan (TSP), Government has set in motion plans to re-bundle ZESA Holdings, which was first unbundled in 1997 and later in 2006.

The unbundling created five companies, namely Powertel Communications, Zimbabwe Electricity and Transmission Distribution Company (ZETDC), Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC), Zesa Enterprises (Zent) and Zesa Holdings.

Further, Government set up the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) and the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (Zera).

The move is thought to have exerted more costs on the company and the tariff, as all executives earn huge salaries and obnoxious perks such as top-of-the-range vehicles and loans to buy houses.

Cabinet believes re-bundling ZESA will ensure the power utility is managed as one entity and ceases to be “top heavy”, which would potentially bring efficiencies.

Experts also believe that ZESA’s push for a 30 percent tariff increase is in tandem with the pronouncements in the February 20 Monetary Policy Statement, which liberalised foreign currency trading.