THE City of Harare is engaging the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) over rising cases of streetlight power outages in residential and commercial areas as a result of prepaid electricity meters running out of power.
ZETDC has rolled out prepaid meters for street and tower lights, a process that began in June this year in places like Bulawayo and Chitungwiza.
The move is aimed at improving service delivery, reducing energy loss and ensuring councils prepay for their electricity.
Speaking to journalists on Monday during Harare’s strategic planning meeting, mayor Jacob Mafume said the concept of installing prepaid meters on tower lights, traffic signals and streetlights appeared beneficial on paper, but in reality, it had a “cobra effect”.
“We are also discussing with ZETDC. There seems to have been a prepaid electricity system gone wild and we are engaging constructively with ZETDC that it looks good on paper to say that you have put a prepaid meter on a tower light, you have put a prepaid electricity meter on a traffic light or you have put a prepaid meter on a streetlight,” he
said.
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“It looks very good on paper, but it is a policy which has what we call a cobra effect. It is a disastrous effect on the public. It increases crime, it can cause accidents when these things are not juiced up properly in time.”
Mafume warned that when prepaid meters on street infrastructure run out of power, the affected lights and signals suddenly go off, creating dangerous conditions for pedestrians and drivers
alike.
“You know, in India, someone came up with a bright idea some years ago to say that those whose homesteads were infested by cobras, would be rewarded if they brought a cobra to be killed by the State.
“What ended up happening is that people started breeding cobras and created what is the cobra effect because they will get money from the State.
“Now this policy of putting prepaid meters on tower lights and streetlights has got a cobra effect on the residents. It’s just a bad policy.
“Now the tower lights go off when the juice ends, there’s crime, an accident can occur if the meter ends abruptly in the middle of the night.”
Mafume described the move as a bad way of doing things.
“We should have a public policy element in terms of how we implement some of the policies that look good on paper, but have disastrous consequences on the ground,” he said.
He further indicated that for the past 13 years the city has not fully achieved what the plan was meant to.
“However, we have still got a long way to go in terms of the basic necessities that make living in a city easy. Things like water, road congestion, transport, electricity, jobs and so
forth.
“These are still to be achieved and one of the key issues of consulting is how do we unlock this lockdown. And we also need to dovetail our strategy with the strategy of the government’s NDS 1 [National Development Strategy 1], the 2030 planning process in terms of
visioning.
“How do we synchronise the achievement? How do we complement the sets of visions so that we come up with one documentation?”
Mafume said the city was working to restore order and fill all acting positions.
“We have got acting people in many positions.
“We need to accelerate filling of those positions.
“There are people who are there in those positions and they have been there for quite some time and working, but one needs to have the confidence of having been confirmed.”