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Pay As You Go System Foolproof
Harare, Mar 04, 2010 (The Herald/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --
Recently, Zesa Holdings pulled the plug off Harare's western suburbs of Warren Park, Highfield and Glen View and disconnected electricity supplies to 500 households over unpaid bills.
Some of the defaulters are alleged to have gone for over a year without settling bills even just for a month.
And with the blitz set to spread to other suburbs of Harare before going national, more households may soon find themselves groping in the dark after supplies have been cut, Zesa Holdings spokesperson Fullard Gwasira recently warned.
"The company is owed more than US$200 million that could have been used to pay for electricity imports, materials and equipment for network expansion and the maintenance of coal and thermal power stations to ensure security of electricity supplies.
"Business viability has to be maintained even though we have to take full cognisance of the prevailing economic situation," he said.
While Gwasira's argument remains valid, the residents whose supplies were disconnected felt the power utility was rather ruthless and could have at least warned them of the impending power disconnections.
And to convince the residents that Zesa was only doing what any other business would have done under the circumstances would be the equivalent of trying to convince an Eskimo to buy ice.
Their argument is that they have gone for most of the time without electricity through unexplained power cuts, which automatically discourages them from paying bills.
Maybe the adoption of pre-paid cards in place of the current electricity billing system may enable the power consumers to rationalise consumption.
With prepaid cards they will see exactly how much power they consume and such a scheme would obviously help them avoid the inconvenience of being disconnected in case of non-payment of bills.
The pre-paid system disciplines the consumers and teaches them to budget the consumption in line with the financial resources available.
Under such an arrangement, Zesa would provide subscribers with new meters, with the pre-paid cards being made available in all shops and malls.
Gwasira said Zesa Holdings had conducted a pilot study last year in Marlborough to establish the feasibility of reintroducing prepayment meters, which had been phased out due to supplier unwillingness to upgrade and provide spares.
"The net result was that Zesa became unable to adjust the tariff and produce prepayment cards for recharging the system.
This had the unenviable result of customers running out of power without being able to get recharge power," he said.
He was, however, quick to point out that a pilot study had since been completed and Zesa Holdings had since identified a supplier, who has both capacity and back-up spares to sustain the successful re-introduction of the pre-payment option which had lapsed.
The pilot study involved 160 participants before roll out. The pre-payment system is not a new phenomenon to Zimbabwe.
"Additionally, the pre-payment system brings with it customer convenience in that customers can actually budget the amount of money they need to use on electricity for that particular month.
"It also negates the issue of billing which some segments of our customer base have been unhappy with," explained Mr Gwasira.
The system is premised on the concept of the cell phone, wherein if you do not re-charge you do not phone, and in this case you do not get power.
The initial phase comprises 10 000 meters to be installed for those customers who would have opted for the prepayment service.
"The service is open to all customers who require it and should register with their customer service centres and service will be installed as soon as meters are available," Gwasira said.
He also added that Zesa took the withdrawal of power supplies seriously and only did it as a last resort. It is mostly done to trigger some response from customers who for one reason or the other failed to heed statements to pay their bills for a period of time and would not have approached the power utility for a payment plan.
Withdrawal of service should not be viewed as a punishment, but a way of limiting the growing financial exposure of the organisation and also helps contain the customer debt at a level which the customer is able to comfortably pay off, he further explained.
The withdrawal of service is a standard practice with all service providers and is not unique to Zesa alone.
Over the past few years, smart cards have achieved a growing acceptance as a powerful tool for security and time management in countries like South Africa, Zambia and Namibia, to name just a few.
The smart card is used along with a controller that can be connected to the energy meter.
For every unit of electricity consumed, the unit-charge from the card gets reduced simultaneously.
When the threshold balance limit of the card is reached or goes below it, the alarm is triggered, in addition a message is sent to the consumer's mobile phone, indicating that the card should be re-charged.
If the balance of the card goes zero, a relay is activated which trips open the supply to the consumer. On re-charge of the card, the supply can be restored.
The ultimate aim is to put an end to the queues at the billing counters and to reduce the expenditure towards billing and system monitoring of the electricity board.
In this project the smart card technique is used for paying electricity bills.
The smart card used is rechargeable and has a memory module for storing the current balance status of the card.
The popularity of the prepaid smart card is yet to be established given the fact that it calls for a lot of discipline on the part of the consumer as she can easily monitor the usage of power and contain usage and credit within manageable limits.
However, the main points the consumer has to ponder over are the safe keeping of the smart card and to re-charge it each time it runs low or empty.
The service provider, Zesa, in this instance must also be adequately prepared to meet customer requirements and avoid the same inconveniences the customers are trying to escape from the conventional billing method.
Zambia's current pre-paid system continues to have some unnecessary costs to users, a direct carry-over from the time it was introduced when the Energy Regulation Board, should have made it some condition that there would be consumer convenience.
The Post newspaper of Zambia says the pre-payment system is still inadequate and underdeveloped and steals from consumers.
"One problem is pay point location. The pay points are too few, have limited opening times, are too far, and put extra cost for consumers to reach.
"Sometimes, one goes to Zambia Electricity Supply Commission (Zesco's) private agents and finds they do not have units or sometimes the agents close early," writes Gabriel Banda.
He says that the consumer may have travelled long and will then need to go and seek another pay point creating further expenses in transport and time.
Consumer cost of transport to access pay points may have the value of at least one week's electricity.
Zesco and agent pay points therefore need to be easily accessible, near residences and opened at convenient times.
In Lusaka, a major help is Breakpoint, at Kabwata, which is open 24 hours a day while for some unclear reasons, the Zesco headquarters pay point is open up to around 22.00 hours.
Transportation is an extra cost and Zesco can decongest Breakpoint and agents and make things easier by opening other pay points, systems, and times and must also reach a situation of twenty-four hours service at least at one centre in the city.
They must also consider electronic payment through ATMs and cell phones and employ a few more staff, agents and systems, which would however add a small cost to Zesco compared to the big cost it transfers to the consumers and the economy due to a poor payment system.
Back home, households should try to make use of renewable sources of energy like the solar option to save the little electricity that is available to power the industrial sector and get the economy going.
Zesa urgently needs cash to resuscitate the Hwange Power Station that is facing a critical shortage of spares while it also needs to meet the import bill as its current generation capacity is less than 800 megawatts against a national demand of 2 200MW.
The Hwange power plant is currently struggling to produce 77MW yet it is designed to generate 750MW amid growing fears that the unit may soon become unserviceable if nothing is done to urgently refurbish it.
"The nation may soon be plunged into total darkness if the situation remains unchanged," Gwasira warned.
The nation can only hope that the latest project involving two Chinese companies on the Batoka Hydropower Station will be completed soon.
On completion, the power station will generate 1 000MW, which will significantly boost the current output.
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