Don’t sacrifice local businesses for power exports Mundubile tells Government

By NATION REPORTER

LEADER of the Opposition in Parliament, Brian Mundubile says local businesses should not be sacrificed because of Government’s desire to improve Zesco’s solvency and liquidity through electricity exports.

Mr Mundubile, who is PF presidential candidate has reiterated his call to Government to discontinue power exports to neighboring countries to save local businesses from collapse.

“We have to save the local businesses even if the export of power is meant to improve Zesco’s solvency and liquidity levels. It should not be done at the expense of local businesses. I think it weighs more on the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises locally than on a single entity like Zesco. So I still want to emphasis that if at all there is any export of power, it must be discontinued at once,” Mr Mundubile said.

He also challenged Government to fully disclose the electricity generation status of all power plants in the country, apart from Kariba South power plant, which is affected by low water levels.

Mr Mundubile, who is also PF Mporokoso Member of Parliament, said Zambians should interrogate more and find out how the other power generation plants had been affected and how this was impacting on load shedding.

“The Kariba Dam is the one that is mostly affected and if my figures are correct, we must have gone down by about 600 megawatts (MW). The question that begs to be answered is that we have not been given any information regarding the other sources of power and the status on generation.”

He said the country’s electricity generation capacity was 1,600MW when the PF assumed office in 2011 and that in 10 years,  this had more than doubled to the current 3,450 MW.