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*"ZESA Lost US$500 Million Infrastructure To Vandalism"*

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ZESA Holdings has lost US$495.3 million through the theft of copper and aluminium cables as well as the vandalisation of transformers over the past five years.

This was said by Deputy Energy and Power Development Minister Magna Mudyiwa while addressing delegates at the Global Renaissance Investments (GRI) Zimbabwe Infrastructure Investment Summit held in Victoria Falls last week. Said Mudyiwa:

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> The power utility is going through a number of challenges, including obsolete equipment which needs rehabilitation.

> Once that is done, we will be able to increase our generation of electricity from that end.

> The other major challenge that we are going through is vandalism of our transformers, cables, copper and aluminium. They have since moved up from levels of vandalism to sabotage.

> From January 2017 to March 2022, ZESA lost a total of 1 282 transformers with an economic value amounting to US$495.3 million, which is almost 10 times the replacement value.

> You can see how vandalism is slowing down our efforts in the provision of much-needed electricity.

Mudyiwa said foreign currency shortages were also making it difficult for ZESA to replace the transformers and cables.

She also said that Hwange Power Station was often operating at half capacity because of obsolete equipment, which had seen it generating an average of 400 megawatts (MW) against a capacity of 900MW.

Mudyiwa said the Hwange expansion project was now 90% complete and that the government hoped to commission Unit 7 before the end of this year while Unit 8 is expected to be commissioned in February 2023. She said:

> Unit 7 will add 300MW to the power grid and Unit 8 will also add 300MW, bringing total generation to at least 2 000MW or thereabout, which will be a very big improvement in our generation of electricity, hopefully by the end of next year.

More: NewsDay

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