ZESA has spent a number of months encouraging customers to pay their bills – remember that time when it seemed like the Energy Minister’s vocabulary only consisted of the words “pay your bills”? Well, those days are gone and ZESA will now take a tougher stance.
The official ZETDC circular notifying defaulter of whats to come reads:
NOTICE OF POWER DISCONNECTION TO DEFAULTERS
The ZETDC would like to advise all defaulting customers who are on the post-paid system to settle their electric bills without any further delay to avoid the inconvenience associated with power being disconnected.
ZETDC also advises that it has intensified revenue collection efforts in order to recover the $1.2 billion debt that is locked in defaulting customers to enable the power utility to enhance service delivery…
Whilst the warning might be sincere, I doubt that defaulters will be incentivised to pay what they owe when they don’t have power for 16-18 hours a day. Maybe the debt collection strategy coupled with disconnections will work but considering that it 6 more hours without power per day, there might be some who are just fine with the disconnection since paying customers aren’t in a much better situation right now.
5 comments
Even with the 18 hour powercuts, it still makes sense to pay ZESA. The only exception being if you are fully running on Solar. Otherwise ZESA electricity is still the cheapest so it’s better to have that 6 hours of power than running the generator round the clock.
ZESA is cheap, if and only if, you use and need ZESA within the hours that it’s available. Once you start up your generator, it is a cost that is coming to you because of the “cheap” ZESA. When your fridge and freezer are turned into cupboards, it is a cost of the “cheap” ZESA. When you wake up in the middle of the night to iron, when you should be resting, it is a cost of “cheap” ZESA. Do not fool yourself, at all, into thinking that you are benefiting from “cheap” ZESA.
You pay your ZESA bills because you received a service (a poor one at that) and are thus obligated to pay for that service, period! They are asking you to pay for what you used, not what you didn’t use. This is unlike the HCC which wants you to pay rates whilst not collecting refuse, maintaining roads e.t.c…
Defaulters exist because there are special groups of people who are never disconnected, with outstanding bills for power that a regular family would need a lifetime to achieve. It has always been ZESA protocol to disconnect power from defaulters, it just depends on who you are. It also explains why some households and businesses have post-paid meters, despite others in the exact same area having pre-paid meters.
I think the time (Mugabe) said don’t pay (remember)
Hi guys, what are the short codes for the zesa Meter to check usage borrow zesa etc, thanks in advance