EDITORIAL COMMENT: Power cuts: Let’s tread carefully on mines Dr Samuel Undenge
Minister Samuel Undenge

Minister Samuel Undenge

ON Tuesday, Energy and Power Development Minister Samuel Undenge addressed the House of Assembly on the current crippling power shortages the country is going through and his statement has elicited mixed reactions. Undenge proposed a raft of measures to mitigate power cuts and some of them will hit productive sectors of the economy hard — drawing criticism particularly from the mining industry. Large users of electricity such as Unki, Mimosa, Zimplats, Zimasco, ZimAlloys and Afroshin have been asked to reduce load by 25 percent on the existing contracts and this move is expected to yield 25 megawatts to the national grid.

Sable Chemicals, which consumes 40MW, will be cut off, bringing ammonium nitrate production to a halt. This move, Undenge said, would see Harare’s punishing 18-hour load shedding regime brought down to six hours a day. The nation will have to import AN fertiliser in the interim. Other measures include limited load shedding in central business districts of major cities and asking security cantonments such as police and army barracks to reduce consumption in their residential areas.

The government has already launched the solar geyser water heating system requiring all households to install solar geysers. All these measures are expected to significantly reduce power consumption and release much needed MW to the grid. In his address to the August House, Undenge emphasised the need to keep Hwange Thermal power station operating at full capacity while generation at Kariba remains depressed due to low water levels.

The country’s current maximum demand is 1,610MW. Kariba is producing 475MW while the five units at Hwange, firing at full throttle, will give us an average of 600MW. This will give the country an average of 1,195MW inclusive of the 70MW from the small plants and 50MW imported from Mozambique. This will give a shortfall of 400MW making load-shedding unavoidable.

Undenge said its intensity would depend on the performance of Hwange, making it critical to keep all its unit up and running. Yesterday, mining firms, through their umbrella body, the Chamber of Mines, implored Zesa to spare them the drastic power cuts to prevent potential unbearable costs to the nation. They instead said Zesa should consider prioritising supply to industry, especially mining, to avoid potential loss of jobs, closure of mining companies, scaling down of production and missed projected growth targets.

Sable Chemicals, which faces possible closure due to the envisaged power cut, said 500 workers would lose jobs if government goes ahead with its plans. We commiserate with both government and the big firms targeted for drastic power cuts as the two parties have to tread a fine line in reaching a compromise on the tough situation they find themselves in. Zesa has to play a delicate balancing act in meeting the country’s power needs against a reduced generation capacity and competing demands.

While we agree that tough measures need to be taken to manage the power situation in the country, we feel there is no need to throw away the baby with the bath water. In an economy struggling to get out of the woods, it is critical that productive sectors are kept running at all costs. For instance, the Chamber of Mines estimates that mining accounts for an average of 16 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, marginally behind agriculture at about 17 percent, and in excess of 60 percent of the country’s annual export earnings.

Further, Zimbabwe exported about $2 billion worth of minerals last year, significantly more than the country’s cumulative exports bill of $3,5 billion. This makes a compelling case to spare the industry from power cuts given its strategic importance to the nation. The government therefore has to re-look its reallocation model and consider leaving out key industries such as mining from load-shedding because this might be counter-productive in the long run.

In the case of Sable Chemicals, the move by the government could be justified considering the amount of electricity consumed by the company vis-a-vis it’s contribution to the economy. Granted, fertiliser is critical to agriculture but the costs of producing it are now unsustainable.

We are aware that the decision to cut supplies might have come as a bolt from the blue and could affect the future of the company and this could have been managed better.

However, the underlying fact remains that at 40MW, Sable Chemicals was consuming a lot of electricity for a single entity. The company should have planned ahead and re-tooled by acquiring state of the art machinery which would have made it cheaper to produce fertiliser instead of relying on antiquated equipment which is costly to maintain. Compounding their predicament is the $150 million bill to Zesa which severely weakens their case. Besides, large consumers of electricity such as Sable need their own small power plants and for a company that has been in existence since 1972, this should have long been in place. Importing fertiliser sounds like a better option for now.

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