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Mr Gwasira

Felex Share Herald Reporter
Zesa has terminated the contracts of pre-paid meter suppliers as it prepares to switch to smart meters to curb the circumvention of the billing system by unscrupulous consumers.
The pre-paid meters were being supplied and installed by Solahart, Finmark and Nyamezela of South Africa since August 2012, while the fourth contracted company, ZTE of China, was dumped midway for supplying faulty meters.

The companies had installed a combined 515 000 prepaid meters to date and Zesa now has to go to tender for the supply of 300 000 smart meters to meet Zim-Asset’s target of 800 000 units.

The tenders would entail the supply of back-end equipment and the smart meters.

Smart meters, though expensive, report back to the centre any by-passing taking place unlike prepaid meters that is costing the power utility about US$10 million monthly in revenue due to power theft.

The contracts were terminated while suppliers had thousands of meters in stock. Zesa spokesperson Mr Fullard Gwasira recently said the power utility would buy the meters from the suppliers and install them.

“The Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) has not cancelled the contracts of prepaid meter installers, but the project has successfully come to an end as per the set targets,” he said.

“The power utility has completed 97 percent of the project with 515 000 prepaid meters having been installed on domestic premises and small institutions countrywide as per the first phase.

“Only one contractor has faced technical constraints and the power utility has amicably reached an agreement that it buys out the 40 000 remaining prepaid meters from them and utilise its own labour to have them installed to complete the whole exercise.”

Mr Gwasira said another contractor would be allowed to complete the installation of the 6 000 meters that it had in stock.

He said installation of smart meters by another four contractors was expected to begin early next year after the tendering processes.

In line with Zim-Asset, Mr Gwasira said, local companies would take 40 percent of the 300 000 smart units while three other companies would compete for the other 60 percent.

“ZETDC is also expecting to have finalised the engagement of service providers to install smart prepaid meters within the first quarter of 2015 through due processes of the State Procurement Board,” he said.

“The engagement of those service providers would be in four categories wherein the first category of 40 percent (120 000 smart meters) encompasses those locally registered suppliers that have the highest level of technical competence in line with the provisions of the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation of empowering our indigenous businesses as well as to create employment,” he said.

“The other downstream categories are 30 percent (second category of 90 000 smart meters), 20 percent (third category of 60 000 smart meters), and the fourth category of 10 percent (30 000 smart meters) depending on their different levels of technical competence.”