(right) and his Deputy George Zulu (centre) inspect the Lusaka fuel
storage depot with Lusaka Province Minister Obvious Mwaliteta before
commissioning of the plant
LOAD SHEDDING will be history by December next year, Mines, Energy and Water Development minister Christopher Yaluma has said.
Mr Yaluma said Government had set December 2014 as the target to end constant power cuts that had rocked the country for the past six years.
He was speaking during a media briefing after touring the ongoing construction of Phase one of the 300 mega watts of a thermal power plant at Maamba Collieries Limited (MCL) in Sinazongwe district, on Wednesday.
“By December next year load shedding will be a thing of the past. This is because of the future planning the Government and ZESCO have committed themselves to and as government we appreciate the work that has been done by MCL,” he said.
“There has been wholesale load shedding by the national power utility company. The country has experienced serious problems, instead of carrying out reasonable rationing of power,” he said.
Mr Yaluma said this was because of the way the power network had been configured which he said had extended constraints to the manufacturing and mining sectors.
He urged MCL management and staff to maintain high safety standards at all times.
MCL resident director Ashwin Devineni said 50 per cent of the work on the thermal power plant had been done and that Phase one was earmarked to be complemented by August 2014.
Mr Devineni said the company would be briefing the Government on the progress of the power plant on a quarterly basis.
ZESCO Managing Director Cyprian Chitundu said the partnership between ZESCO and MCL would go an extra mile in reducing outages in the country.
Mr Chitundu said ZESCO would continue exploring all avenues which were aimed at increasing the quantity of electricity adding that the successful completion of the first Phase of the thermal power plant would increase the capacity of power transmission.
Sinazongwe District Commissioner Dodo Sindaza said the new investors at MCL had brought life to the district and appealed to ZESCO to ensure that the district benefited from the electricity that would generated at MCL.
Can’t wait. Load shedding started to appear normal.
You shall wait a while for that to happen….
If anything it is such claims (BUFI) that is costing this PF govt it’s popularity and votes.
imwe bayaluma,
this song has been sung by all your predecessors from the kaunda era to date.
it has now become monotonous.
every jim and jack now know that you export electricity to other countries at the expense of your own. and whose returns is not accounted for. no one knows were that cash realised go to.
please spare us this.
agony is when your own starts telling lies….
Tizaona!!! Time flies and before you realize it December 2014 will be here.
Yeah Right! We heard this three years ago. You are right, bro these guys think they are talking to children, before they know it they will be out of office, and this time they will not even manage to be in opposition!
These poeple don’t learn, did they saw how 90 days came to pass so quickly before they coud fullfill even one promise?
There should not have been any power outages in the first place!!!
Where was ZESCO and govt when power demands and consumption were going up? The damage caused to our economy over the years and continuing is incalculable.
Load shedding by all account is simply criminal and inexcusable.
The previous MMD govt and ZESCO management deserved to be prosecuted
Yaluma, go to hell and pay the bills
At least not 90 days
Yaluma in the news again after failing to pay your bill
Mmhhh,where have i heard this very old song before? I’m sure Yaluma is not replaying it for the zambian audience without prio permission.
Iwe ka Yaluma kach.ikamba. Ba PF told us the same tale before taking over akanfulumende. Now you have gone back to the same lie and re-lie us again obviously knowing that us Zambians are gullible.
Ati re-lie…….lol,Has this Dude paid the tab for his sex pad?
Ubufi. By next year PF will be shedding its power.
We are part of the the team working on the 300 mega warts coal fired power plant. Indeed what the minister said is true.
fuseki iwe,
for how long have you been working on the same?
I don’t understand how Zesco and it’s govt have failed to deliver uninterrupted power to their consumers. They have millions of customers screaming for electricity which means more money to invest in more power generators. Or is it more complicated than this obvious solution? Does it make business sense to discourage consumers from buying more electricity or order them to reduce consumption? It’s this kind approach to business that has prevented our country from developing. We don’t see things from a business perspective.
It’s called monopoly. They don’t give a rat’s ar**** about the kind of service you and I receive.
So what happened to the works at Kariba which gobbled up millions of dollars to stop load shading and the power which Zambia exports to it’s neighbours? government signed a $650 million deal with local company Lunzua Power Authority Ltd. to build two hydropower plants in the country’s Northern Province to boost power in 2011, what happened to that project?Zambia issued a debutant Euro bond of US$750 million, part of the money has been given to Zesco therefore if this load shading is not resolved by the proposed date then the Government and the utility company should be investigated for corruption. Money has been invested in this utility company going back to 2004 and it’s about time they delivered.
These are the sort of issues our government and opposition should be fighting each other on or even putting each other in hospital for not these manufactured bye-elections. I believe people on this blog have better knowledge and experience of what’s going on in the country because our politicians are so focused on how to maximise the loot whilst they are in public office. Our media need to mature and assign journalists to follow up on these projects. You should train your journalists in various sectors and energy should be one of them so that they can inform,investigate and follow-up issues with confidence. We have major infrastructure developments such as HMN international airport Livingstone, Heroes stadium lusaka and others, all with incomplete follow-ups.
Another pf govt lie. U blamed mmd for loading thinking it ws an easy thing to fix now even state she of all places experienced power cut early this year or late last year.
During mmd reign the loadshedding was seasonal with pf it became the norm like day and night. I remember they had told us that it would disappear after 90 days. I give it to Sata for having convinced voters that he was worth their vote. Chaume sana chi mudala, ukushinga abantu abengi butter yafulanganshi….
Show us the receipt for your accommodation bill proving to us that you have paid and maybe, just maybe we will take you seriously, otherwise methinks you’re just trying to change the subject and draw our keen attention from your nkongole.
They just keep pushing the dates forward we heard this 2 years ago and how can you trust this Yaluma he told us the same lies at communication, moreover he can’t even pay his bills and we let such people oversee million dollar hydroelectric projects…only in Zambia.
Adjusting 90 day promises, but outcome will be the same; FAILURE to fulfil.
we are tired of these lies and re-lies
when will see new that headlines: CITIZENS SURPRISED THEY HAVE NOT EXPERIENCED LOAD SHEDDING IN ONE YEAR. MINISTER CLARIFIES LOAD SHEDDING ENDED A YEAR AGO!
bufi, ulabeja, wenye, booza, lies have seen your popularity fade to zero!
i meant to say: when will we see news …
We have heard of this same story so many times before!
our development news is what we call potential news. our development news is in future tense not in past tense. when are going to report we have done , we did ? everything we are going to, we will, very soon etc . malabishi.
if a smart guy who understands hardworking and campaign telling people to work hard so that we develop , they will never listen to him. if a crooked guy say everything will free on the table they cheer up and put him in office. he fails they blame him again. where do we have free things on this earth please
Coal burning?! Here comes cancer in a well knit basket.
Yaluma,wilabepa ubufi.We are used to load sheding.What will be the capacity for that thermal plant?