THE Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) has quickly moved to purchase all outstanding distributor transformers from a company it had awarded a tender in 2010 to supply the products.

In 2010, ZETDC floated a tender for the supply of distributor transformers, which was won by Pito Engineering (Pvt) Ltd. But over the past five years, ZETDC had purchased a mere 28 percent of the tender value awarded to Pito.

Pito Engineering director Alex Chideme told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy earlier this week that ZETDC had engaged the company and agreed to purchase the balance of the tender value by the end of this year.

But that was only after Pito Engineering had made an initial appearance before the same committee two weeks previously.

“We engaged ZETDC and the main thing was the tender, which was awarded in 2010, which is the distribution transformers. They had partly written orders for that tender.

“The full tender value was $9,980,000, and so far what’s outstanding is $7,3 million. The balance we had supplied between 2010 up to now.

“When we engaged the ZETDC about two weeks ago they said to us ok fine we’ve come at the right time this is now your opportunity to supply the remaining transformers because they had had a lot of transformers being stolen throughout the country.

“They said they need about 1,600 transformers for this year and our order remaining has 1,342, so they said going to purchase all those transformers which are on our order this year,” said Chideme.

ZETDC is a subsidiary of Zesa Holdings, which is responsible for the transmission of electricity from the power stations, the distribution of electricity and its retailing to end users. Apparently, during the six-year period, ZETDC was purchasing most of its distribution transformers from Zesa Enterprises (ZENT) — an investment arm for Zesa Holdings that holds a diversified business portfolio.

“ZETDC was ordering transformers from its sister company, ZENT, which manufactures similar type of transformers. The excuse they were giving were that by ordering from ZENT instead of Pito, they were protecting their business,” said Chideme.

The issue of tendering in the electricity sector has been in the spotlight this week, with another Zesa entity, PowerTel, having been alleged to have been unprocedurally awarded the contract to become the only authorised aggregator for ZETDC prepaid electricity tokens at the behest of then Minister of Energy and Power Development Dzikamai Mavhaire and permanent secretary Patson Mbiriri. — BH24

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