16 January 2014, Dar es Salaam -Public organizations, domestic customers and industries owe the Tanzania Electric Supply Company Limited (Tanesco) 233bn/- as of December, last year.
Tanesco Managing Director, Felchesmi Mramba said yesterday that out of the 233bn/-, public organizations including Zanzibar owe Tanesco 129bn/- and the remaining customers owe the company 104bn/-.
“As of now, the company has come up with a special programme on debt collection which will include issuance of notices to call for customers to pay in a specified period or face power cuts,” he said.
In another development, Mr Mramba said the company has done very well in connecting new customers where 143,000 were connected last year.
He added that those with pending requests will be connected by February, this year. “Last year, we received too many requests for connections and despite the record high connections; we failed to cover all we had planned.
We will increase speed in connecting new customers and our target is to connect all by February,” he said. He added that Tanesco was eying reviewing procurement procedures to do away with shortage of working tools.
He said that the review will also aim at reducing burden at the Tanesco’s headquarters by allowing regional offices to go independent in procurement.
Speaking on electricity availability, Mr Mramba said the situation was good and that there were no shortages related to low generation.
“Though the demand has increased from 851MW to 898MW, we have no power shortages,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Mramba said technical problems at Sokoine and Ubungo in Dar es Salaam and the fall of electricity poles in Kahama caused loss amounting to 1.4bn/- and disturbances to customers.
He said that such problems are due to theft of wires and metals, used in making agricultural tools and being sold as raw materials to metal factories.
– Tanzania Daily News
