Admire Chatindo
Business people and ordinary residents in Chikombedzi have cried foul over continuous power black outs that are mainly caused by unattended faults which runs into months thereby which has seen residents clocking to six months without electricity in one year.
Residents said they now feel neglected and forgotten by service providers in terms of having electricity.
Jesina Gare Advisory member for Ward 11 and ward 12 in Chikombedzi, said power outages has been experienced in the past years where electricity is provided for the first six months of the year.
Gare implored Zimbabwe Electricity Distribution Company to attend faults in time and she said they had a fault in November last year and the problem was only solved recently called the power company to treat them equally with other consumers.
“In Chiredzi South generally we get electricity for six months in year. Faults take time to be attended to and I implore Zimbabwe Electricity Distribution Company (ZETDC) to attend faults in time. These erratic power supply is affecting many and it’s now not viable to do businesses that require electricity in Chikombedzi.
“It’s an undeniable fact that we get electricity for only six months in a year. We have an example here where power went out last in November and power was only restored June 2023 this year.”
One nurse at Chikombedzi hospital Shamiso Mupereki, said electricity was easily affected by windy and its worse during the rainy season where we go for without power and the situation affects the mortuary operations at the Hospital.
“Windy days are associated with power outages and in the rainy season we can go for two months without electricity and this affect hospital operations like we cannot operate the mortuary. We used to have a functional backup solar system which recently went off due to a fault and we have a generator as an alternative but it’s costly to operate given fuel costs” said Mupereki.