TENDAI BHEBE IN BULAWAYO
A unit of ZESA Holdings is accused of forcing residents in Nkulumane suburb, Bulawayo to dig up trenches to locate electricity faults, a duty which is supposed to be done by the power utility technical workers, Business Times can report.
Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association chairperson Ambrose Sibindi said the move by the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) put the lives of residents at risk of being electrocuted.
“Residents from ward 23 in Nkulumane, are really much concerned by the behaviour of the service provider that is the ZETDC. What happened is that during the festive season there was a fault in one of the areas in the suburb. They reported the fault to ZETDC. When they failed to ascertain the problem they instructed the residents to dig up the electrical wire,” he said.
Sibindi said the residents’ lives were put at risk trying to find the electrical cable.
He said ZETDC should handle their work in a professional manner.
“For the company to direct residents to dig we think that was very unfair in two ways.
“In the first place, the service provider should attend to the fault. Secondly, they are also putting residents’ lives at risk. Surely, how do you tell someone who is an amateur in that field to dig the trenches?”
He added: “We are even afraid that some of them can be electrocuted in the process. Residents are the ones who are giving them business so they need to respect their customers and attend to their grievances. It is our hope that the managers from ZESA would desist from that practice. “
ZETDC chief public relations officer, Shepherd Mandizvidza, said cable fault location and restoration is done by experienced technical employees of the power utility.
“ZETDC is committed to deliver quality service to all its valued customers countrywide through the utilisation of its own resources including manpower. We would like to clarify that the power utility did not at any stage task members of the community to dig trenches to locate a cable fault,” he said.
“As an organisation that is conscious of the safety of the public it is not possible to risk their lives by asking them to carry out tasks that can only be done by experts.”
