Mr Ncube stated that if he had looked at the flow of the waters he would have been able to anticipate that when the country hits a certain time, the water levels will not be able to generate electricity to full capacity, adding that he would have also looked for solutions in the neighbouring countries with power as this would have enabled him to mobilise solutions to the potential problem.
“With Loadshedding there’s a failure on the natural part and the human part, on the natural part I can’t explain it, I will just mention that our hydrology is poor, our water reservoirs are also poor, no matter what we do, we have no control over the natural part, and on the human part we should have anticipated on that because in leadership theres anticipation of a problem so that when it comes, you are ready to face it, so, to that extent I shall take responsibility by stating that we failed the nation as ZESCO and as Board Chairman I take the full responsibility, I should have been better informed, and aware by measuring my hydrologies, looked at the projection and see at what point, we are going to hit a crisis, and I should have started fining for inteverning measures so that by the time the crisis comes, am ready to meet it and I wasn’t,” he explained
In responding as to whether he misinformed the President who assured that load shedding is the thing of the past, Mr Ncube admitted to have misinformed the Head of State because if he had given him correct information, the President wouldn’t have made such a statement, adding that the President does not seat at ZESCO everyday, neither does he seat on the ZESCO Board, but he rather gets information through ZESCO and if they give him information and he then uses the same information to inform the nation, then as ZESCO they must take the blame.
“The problem then comes in sometimes when you become arithmetical and not practical, you look at your generation capacity, I look at all our electricity generation stations, Kariba with 1080 megawatts, Kafue Gorge ABOUT 900 megawatts, Kafue Gorge lower with now seating at 600 megawatts, Itezhitezhi seating at 120 megawatts, Maamba with 300 megawatts and many other smaller power stations, and I look at my maximum demand of 2200 megawatts from 3400 megawatts, but am not looking at the underlying factors that will affect the generation, am just looking at the demand versus the capacity but when the circumstances in the generation change, I am blind sided, so that is where the problem comes in,” he disclosed
He further disclosed that there is a bigger problem that might be faced if eversive measures are not taken right now, explaining that if any of the machines sucks water combined with air they will be messed up, and this will that the situation can only be corrected in about 18 months which will be dependant on the damage caused, as a power utility company putting in place immediate measures, four machines where shut down and only remained with two operating even though the two machines are not operating to full capacity, where instead of generating about 180 megawatts, they all generating about 125 megawatts.
The ZESCO Board Chairperson, noted that the power utility company still exports power to neighboring countries because they want to cushion a huge debt which is now amounting to US$3.3 billion.
