The failure by President Hakainde Hichilema and his family to move to State House will cost ZESCO over K1 million as the financially crippled power unity now has to build a new dedicated power unit to feed Community House with uninterrupted power supply.
An assessment by experts from the security and defence wings recommended that Community House be fed from an independent and dedicated power line to avoid supply disconnections that have occurred in the New Kasama area in the recent past.
The experts stated that President Hichilema and his family cannot be exposed to power cuts as it raises the chances of security breaches.
ZESCO has now been tasked to construct a new dedicated feeder line from the nearest Sub Station in the Lusaka MFEZ to suspend it Community House to guarantee 24/7 supply.
A team of senior Engineers constituted for this assignment recently travelled to ZESCO Israel to shop for materials required to undertake the project.
“The instruction is that Community House be fed separately to avoid the First Family going without power, unfortunately, power cuts are inevitable due to several factors and Community House has suffered a few of such in recent past prompting this action to be fed independently but this is coming at a huge cost,” a source from ZESCO Head office revealed.
He added, “We have a number of Sub Stations servicing Lusaka Division but what is going to happen is that we will build a mini station next to the residence so that we don’t subject the President and his family to the risks that happen when we tap from the main stations for mass distribution, what we are building his a single line just to service Community House like the way State House itself is serviced.”
The source said State House was built and connected to a dedicated line that also services Arakan Barracks and the University Teaching Hospital for security reasons.
“It should be appreciated that there is a reason State House sits where it does today. The City Planners considered a number of factors including the security of the First Family and ZESCO had to build infrastructure dedicated to service State House, in the history of that residence, one can count the number of times power has been cut because of that dedicated installation,” he said.
He added, “The First Family could have their reasons for staying put but the Head of State must consider that as a Corporation, we are now spending on projects that were not even budgeted for, this organisation is bleeding financially and we cannot continue spending money that is not even there.”
The source also wondered why huge amounts of money is being spent on a private property.
“As far as we know, Community House is a private property. As ZESCO, we are now spending public resources building power infrastructure to service it 24/7. What will happen when President Hichilema leaves office? Are we going to decommission the infrastructure at Community House?”
The source also disclosed that currently, there is a team of dedicated Engineers on standby at Kabwata Office 24/7 to respond to any emergencies arising from Community House.
“Before this new infrastructure is set up, we have had to keep a good number of Engineers on standby to respond to anything that might come from Community House and these people have to be paid allowances on top of their salaries, it’s a huge cost to the Corporation and should not be allowed to continue,” the source said.
SOURCE: Lusaka Times