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Harare Bureau
Zimbabwe will add 100 megawatts to its national grid by June 21 with the coming on stream of the Dema emergency power plant as initiatives put in place by the government to alleviate power shortages start to come to fruition. This came out during a “monitoring tour” of the Dema project by the Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Misheck Sibanda, his deputies and permanent secretaries from various ministries on Thursday. All the 200 megawatts from the emergency plant are expected to be on line by July 10.

The Office of the President and Cabinet has increased tempo in supervising major projects that are key in driving the government’s economic blueprint, Zim-Asset.

Cabinet gave Zesa Holdings the nod to go the route of emergency power as a stop gap measure after the country experienced acute load shedding during the last quarter of last year.

The outages saw residents going for up to 18 hours without electricity due to declining water levels at the Kariba Dam.

Sakunda Holdings won the Dema contract and is leasing generators from Aggreko, the world’s leading temporary power generation company.

Sibanda said the visit was meant to ensure “on-spot management” of the project following the arrival of key equipment at the site.

“We’ve come to inspect this project which is a government approved project,” said Sibanda.

“In the wisdom of Cabinet, it was decided that we should move towards emergency power generation to augment the scarce power generation we have in the country. We’re implementing Zim-Asset and we want to see our economy grow and catch up with others. Power is very critical to this kind of economic growth we’re envisaging.”

A number of countries have taken the route of emergency power, though it is expensive.

“It’s the intention of our office as the office mandated to monitor major projects under Zim-Asset that we do on-the-spot management and monitor implementation of the projects. Henceforth, we will be inspecting most of the major projects in the country. We call upon those given the opportunities to do your part so that together we grow our economy. We promise to come back shortly before the 21st (of June) to ensure you are ready for commissioning,” said Sibanda.

The government is working on various projects, chief among them expansion of Kariba South Power Station (300MW) and Hwange Units 7 and 8 to (600 MW).

While the big projects materialise, the Dema project will be implemented and complemented by another 120MW that should come from the Mutare Peaking Power Plant. The plant is also one of the priority projects targeted under Zim-Asset and the contractor, Helcraw Electrical (Pvt) Ltd, is already on the ground.

Sakunda Holdings founder and chief executive Kudakwashe Tagwirei said civil works would be completed by June 7 with installation of generators following. “We thank government for allowing us to be the biggest independent power producer in the country,” he said.

“This is a critical moment in our history where we’re talking about Zim-Asset, indigenisation and empowerment. We will not fail you. The intention is that most of that power will be consumed here but depending on government initiatives, some can be exported into the region.”

On challenges, Tagwirei said: “We need clearance to go into the Dema substation and so for the last three weeks we’ve been failing to get access because of security clearance. Zesa has been working on that. We also face tremendous challenge at the Beitbridge border post. We’ve 85 trucks stuck there and in two weeks they will be 200. Fifty percent of those trucks are going to be inspected physically and it takes about three days to inspect one truck because of the way they were loaded. We don’t mind if inspection is done here while they are being offloaded.”

Sibanda responded: “We listened to the challenges being faced at this major project. As we were going around, we started addressing some of them and we want to assure you that before the end of the week you will see some changes.”

Energy and Power Development secretary Partson Mbiriri said: “We assure you that we shall be meeting the targets. I want to implore my colleagues who have roles to do their bit in terms of facilitating the logistics at the border and along the route.”