News / Local
BCC gives up on repossessing power station
29 Mar 2015 at 11:56hrs | Views
BULAWAYO City Council has given up any hopes of reclaiming the Bulawayo Thermal Power Station adding that even if it was granted, it has no cash to rehabilitate it.
The power plants have a combined nominal capacity of 270 megawatts.
The thermal station became part of ZESA in 1987 after the amalgamation of all Local authority electricity undertakings.
City mayor, Martin Moyo it was not an easy task re-claiming the power station.
'It's quite a sensitive issue of saying we want the power station back. It really raises emotions. However, we need to also consider how much we will need in terms of recapitalizing and if we are going to afford to rehabilitate the obsolete infrastructure," Moyo told Sunday News.
He said the power station was handed over to Zesa without payment for the infrastructure.
"So literally the power station still belongs to BCC. However, it has not been fully utilised for some time and when we continue to have these incessant power load-shedding emotions tend to rise because most people would think we would have been able to operate it effectively," Moyo said.
Moyo also accused Zesa of not paying royalties for use of the station.
He said the power utility owed the local authority more than $62 million in royalties against a background whereby BCC has an outstanding electricity bill of over $40 million.
"If you have something which someone is using you have to be paid unless if you have donated. We don't seem to be deriving anything from the power station and those are sentiments which trigger people to want us to take the infrastructure back.
"Zesa owes us more in terms of royalties than we owe them so we are working on an arrangement where we will offset each other's debts but perhaps it's a decision which can't be dealt with at a local level but already Zesa seems not to be satisfied with our calculations," Moyo said.
The power plants have a combined nominal capacity of 270 megawatts.
The thermal station became part of ZESA in 1987 after the amalgamation of all Local authority electricity undertakings.
City mayor, Martin Moyo it was not an easy task re-claiming the power station.
'It's quite a sensitive issue of saying we want the power station back. It really raises emotions. However, we need to also consider how much we will need in terms of recapitalizing and if we are going to afford to rehabilitate the obsolete infrastructure," Moyo told Sunday News.
He said the power station was handed over to Zesa without payment for the infrastructure.
"So literally the power station still belongs to BCC. However, it has not been fully utilised for some time and when we continue to have these incessant power load-shedding emotions tend to rise because most people would think we would have been able to operate it effectively," Moyo said.
Moyo also accused Zesa of not paying royalties for use of the station.
He said the power utility owed the local authority more than $62 million in royalties against a background whereby BCC has an outstanding electricity bill of over $40 million.
"If you have something which someone is using you have to be paid unless if you have donated. We don't seem to be deriving anything from the power station and those are sentiments which trigger people to want us to take the infrastructure back.
"Zesa owes us more in terms of royalties than we owe them so we are working on an arrangement where we will offset each other's debts but perhaps it's a decision which can't be dealt with at a local level but already Zesa seems not to be satisfied with our calculations," Moyo said.
Source - Byo24News
