20 January 2014, Dar es Salaam – The phase one rural electrification project engineered by Tanzania’s Rural Energy Agency (REA) has enabled 34,284 customers to be connected to electricity in Kagera region.
Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO) Kagera Regional Manager Engineer Martin Madulu said that 18,934 customers are in Bukoba district, while 3,303 are in Karagwe. Others are Muleba (3,843) Biharamulo (2,413), Ngara (2,316), Misenyi (1,882).
Others are in Chato district in Geita region. According to Engineer Madulu, 22,885 customers were connected to Luku meters while 11,399 others were connected to ordinary meters.
He revealed that last year, houses of 4, 838 customers were installed with electricity while this year the target was to add 8,400 new customers.
Engineer Madulu said under the phase two plan, a total of 25,562 customers in 364 villages had applied for power connection in their houses that is expected to cost 58.1bn/-.
He has, however raised a concern that government institutions had accumulated unpaid electricity bills amounting to over 1.25bn/-.
Citing some of the heavily indebted government institutions, engineer Madulu named them as Tanzania Peoples Defence Forces (TPDF) that owes Tanesco 722.6m/.
Other institutions include Police force (332.9m/-), Prisons (184.3m/-) and government hospitals (13.6m/-). He said that by December last year, customers in the region had unpaid bills amounting to 1.4bn/- out of which government institutions had 1.2bn/- unpaid bills.
