Zambia’s state-owned electricity company, ZESCO Limited, has announced a restructuring of its load management schedule in an effort to minimize the impact of current load-shedding on the people of the country. Beginning Monday, January 9th, 2023, power will be managed in six-hour intervals with a six-hour break in between. The previous schedule involved 12-hour outages, which had a negative impact on small and medium businesses.
Thabo Kawana, the Director Spokesperson at the Ministry of Information and Media, released a statement about the new schedule. “It shall from today be load managed in 6 hour segments,” he said, “meaning it shall now go out twice in a day but staggered into 6 hour intervals each time and not a straight 12 hour outage. This is been done so as to afford especially our small and medium business men and women to atleast have some form of economic activity within the day as opposed to the 12 hour load management that saw them lose out an entire day without any economic activity owing to power outage.”
President Hakainde Hichilema recently visited the Maamba Power Plant and the Kariba North Bank Power Station, and as a result, the maintenance works program will be adjusted. This may result in more power coming online, which could potentially reduce the load-shedding to as little as four hours per day over the next three weeks. “Following the closed door meeting held by the President and Management at Maamba collieries,” Mr Kawana said, “the maintenance works program will be adjusted and this may result in some more power coming back online and eventually reduce load management to even as little as 4 hours per day. Let’s see what happens in the next 3 weeks or so.”
However, not everyone is in favor of the new schedule. Shaun Tembo, a critic of the restructuring, has described it as a “senseless solution.” He said, “If this was the outcome of [President Hichilema’s] visit to Kariba dam, then it was a wasted trip. What the people really need is reduced or no load-shedding at all, by stopping electricity exports immediately and paying Independent Power Producers such as Maamba Collieries, Ndola Energy etcetera, so that they can resume full production.”
Despite the criticism, the restructuring of the load management schedule will go into effect on Monday, January 9th, 2023, and will remain in place until further notice. The government is hoping that the new schedule will help to alleviate some of the negative impacts of load-shedding on the people and businesses of Zambia.
