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Ministry of Energy to consult on National Energy Policy (NEP)
Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA)
November 01, 2011

Pursuant to our call for the reversal of electricity tariff's which were illegally hiked by ZESA in September 2011 and the call for government to come up with a long term national Energy strategy, the Ministry of Energy and Power Development has invited CHRA to a round table discussion in which they seek to review the National Energy Policy in a participatory manner. CHRA has welcomed this development and will first engage in grassroots consultations thoroughly before coming up with a draft to be presented at the stakeholder workshop. The Ministry is currently in a process of reviewing the NEP, which will be launched in January 2012.

The Ministry of Energy and Power Development recently came under-fire following the position taken by the Minister in defending ZESA on its abnormal electricity tariff hike. The Minister argued that ZESA has not increased tariffs ever since January 2009 and all efforts made to increase tariffs have always hit a snag. To date, despite electricity hikes, there has been no significant improvement in the delivery of electricity which has seen many households going for long hours without electricity. Residents have lost valuable property due to the ill-timed power cuts which are not consistent and do not follow a set load shedding program. It is against this background that CHRA as a resident's movement decided to protest against these hikes because the argument was that hiking tariffs was not going to bring any significant change within the country.

The Competitions and Tariff's commission took ZESA to court and the High Court of Zimbabwe ordered the parastatal to cancel all bills that were converted from Zimbabwe dollar to the current United-States currency. However, ZESA failed to comply with the directive and many residents inherited astronomic bills which could not be explained when it came to the formula used in coming up with the total USD bill. Lately, the consumer council of Zimbabwe dragged ZESA to court because it had contravened the Electricity Act which stipulates that whenever there is a proposed tariff increase, stakeholders have got be consulted of which ZESA did not. The increase in tariffs witnessed a significant increase in commercial products because industry and commerce were the worst hit and so for them to copy, they had to inevitably increase product price which in-turn burdened the resident.

CHRA applauds the Ministry of Energy for taking a positive step to address the electricity problem and hopes that the new policy position will allow for the development of a long-term strategy on power generation.

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