ZESA Blames Copper Cables Theft On Government Policy
ZESA has blamed the government for the theft of electricity copper cables around the country.
ZESA General Manager Loss Control, Festo Madembo, said the issuance of copper dealership licenses and copper export licenses by the government was perpetuating vandalism of electricity infrastructure.
Madembo made the remarks during a stakeholders meeting organised by the power company in Bulawayo, Thursday, reported CITE.
Madembo argued that it was not proper for the government to continue issuing copper licences when the country has not been mining copper for the past three years. He said:
According to reports, copper mines are now deep and the quality is very poor resulting in great demand.
This is what is driving unscrupulous people to vandalise our copper from national infrastructure. Zimbabwe’s copper mine was shut down about twenty-three years ago.
We have the Ministry of Home Affairs which is issuing copper dealership licenses to non-manufacturing and non-copper mining companies. These may be scrap dealers.
Some of these people turn out to vandalize our property. How can we have a copper dealership in a country that doesn’t mine copper?
We also have the Ministry of Industry and Commerce issue copper export licenses to individuals to export copper that is not being mined in the country.
We are saying as ZESA why we issue these dealerships and licenses. These two ministries are issuing vandalism.
There are companies in South Africa that manufacture copper coils which are required for transformer manufacturing.
We have a local subsidiary company that manufactures transformers.
They queue for forex at RBZ and purchase copper coils from South Africa which would have been stolen from Zimbabwe, so basically, we are buying our own copper.
Madembo revealed that in 2021, the company manufactured 281 transformers and during the same year, 288 transformers were stolen.
