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lot fairer in how it rotates power cuts, and it is fixing faults within hours in most cases.
Compared to how it was just three years ago, Zesa has come a long way, although it still has some way to go. But it has plans for increasing generating capacity, both its own and through encouraging investors to build power stations in Zimbabwe.

Generally speaking, the report card on the technical management would show that these men and women are trying, are doing better and are likely to reach adequate levels or better in a very short time.
So it is all the more surprising that Zesa is such a disaster when it comes to billing its consumers and that its financial managers, in contrast to its technical managers, seem so hopeless.
The complaints are serious and wide-ranging.

For a start, Zesa was very unwilling to read meters. It was even unwilling, without a major debate and after a customer queued forever, to accept customer readings.
Zesa estimated consumption, using criteria that at times seemed insane, with the owner of a small upper storey flat, for example, having an estimated consumption of US$500 a month.
It then set arbitrarily suggested monthly payments, largely based on where you lived rather than on what you did with electricity, and ran those for years.

Finally it was forced to read meters, and there were some large adjustments. But don’t think Zesa is going to read a meter every month. They read once, adjust and then estimate again.
But this time estimates are insane; some consumers have had their total shortfall for two years between estimate and actual turned into a monthly estimate. A fairly average Grade 7 pupil would see the fallacy there.

Some lucky people managed to get pre-paid meters, which are now apparently the wrong type and must be replaced.
But others seeking these meters were told to come back in three months, and then told that Zesa was sorry but that the last shipment had already been allocated and to come back in a further three months.
All this is unacceptable.

Zesa was granted a significant increase this month on its tariff on one condition that it charged according to actual meter readings. Perhaps it could obey the ruling and charge old tariff on “estimates” and new tariff on real readings.

The matter does not end there. Zesa has always been fond of sending bills with the final date for payment about a week before the account is delivered.
It also has most of its offices and payment centres with no connection to its financial data bases and seems to lack a system whereby receipted sums can be brought to account within hours of receipting, rather than weeks.

As we have said, it seems strange that while the technical managers are forging ahead and flourishing, the financial managers are such a wretched crew.
The solution to half the troubles is, as everyone knows, to switch residential consumers to pre-paid meters and do this soon, not “next year”. That at least will allow consumers to pay for what they need, and not have to worry about the inadequacies of the financial staff.

Presumably the activation of card or whatever method is used to recharge the new meters will be a technical matter, and so give the downtrodden consumer a chance to have power.
As this is being done, it would be a good idea if Zesa could sort out its financial systems. If consumer accounts are over a month old we shudder to think what sort of data is being given to top management and the board.

In the meantime, perhaps Zesa can have some sort of system whereby a consumer brings in a reading, and the date of that reading can be fixed if Zesa wishes, with that reading used to calculate the bill while the consumer waits for a minute or two.
Anyone cheating or making a mistake can be hit at the next Zesa reading and in any case, at some stage, the present meters will be read for the last time and then replaced with a pre-paid meter.

The present system, or rather lack of system, needs some sort of temporary fix until the pre-paid meters are finally universal. Present efforts just make everything worse.