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Felex Share Harare Bureau
A dispute between Zesa Holdings and the State Procurement Board over prepaid meters is costing the power utility about $8 million in potential revenue every month, adding to nearly $20 million the amount the firm could be losing monthly due to non-technical losses.

Non-technical losses occur as a result of unmetered energy, metering inaccuracies and power thefts.

Zesa has run out of prepaid meters and recently floated a tender for an additional 150,000 units to cater for new connections and faulty meters, a process which might be completed in September based on standard lead times for meters.

As a stop gap measure to cover the period to September, the power utility has repeatedly requested from the SPB permission to directly buy 30,000 meters from firms that have the units at a cost of $2 million.

Local firms, Solahart and Finmark, and Nyamazela of South Africa, were contracted to install 500,000 meters and have since completed their job.

The SPB has told Zesa to wait for the floated tender, a situation which has seen some of the 30,000 new customers in need of the meters connecting themselves illegally to the power utility’s network, with Zesa not receiving any payment.

Zesa is allegedly losing $10 million every month to power thefts orchestrated by its employees who clandestinely cancel huge bills of customers still on its post-paid billing system in exchange for money.

The feud between Zesa and the SPB is feeding into the black market, with contractors allegedly working in cahoots with Zesa employees to charge desperate customers between $300 and $500 to install the units.

More than 3,500 faulty meters have not been replaced, thus prejudicing Zesa of revenue.

The SPB rejected Zesa’s request in a letter by its principal officer, Cledwin Nyanhete, to Zimbabwe Electricity Distribution and Transmission Company managing director, Engineer Julian Chinembiri.

“At its meeting No. 13/2015 held on April 16, 2015, noted that there was no basis for considering the direct purchase of 30,000 meters from the current contractors when there was a running tender for the same requirements closing within two weeks,” reads the letter.

“Accordingly, the State Procurement Board has, through PBR 0477 of April 16, resolved that the accounting officer’s request for direct purchase of prepaid meters be and is hereby rejected for lack of merit.”

Eng Chinembiri said yesterday that their feud with the SPB was frustrating their targets under Zim-Asset, the country’s economic blueprint.

The power utility, according to Zim-Asset, should install about 800,000 meters by 2018.

“We only need the meters to cover us for the next four or so months because we’re losing more than $8 million monthly because of suppressed demand from unconnected customers in both existing and new developments,” Eng Chinembiri said.

“On faulty meters, we’re losing a lot of money and at the end of the day unscrupulous customers will connect themselves, which again leaves us with nothing.”

Eng Chinembiri said pre-paid meters were needed urgently to address a crisis and acquiring them through a formal tender would take long.

“The unit price for the meters will not change from the tendered rates for the initial tender and these contractors have demonstrated capacity to deliver. The situation has gone so bad that we aren’t able to attend to meter faults. There’s a backlog of unconnected customers of around 80,000,” he said.

Zesa has installed more than 537,000 pre-paid meters countrywide since 2011.