Nampula (Mozambique), 5 Jun (AIM) – Mozambique’s publicly-owned electricity company, EDM, claims it has found a solution to the frequent power cuts which have repeatedly hit the northern provinces since 29 May.
The power cuts affected the last few days of voter registration ahead of the municipal elections scheduled for 11 October. Power cuts were reported on the last day, Saturday, in many of the municipalities where opposition political parties believe they can do well.
The lack of electricity gave the supervisors at the registration posts a chance to sabotage the decision of the National Elections Commission (CNE) to extend the hours for voter registration to 22.00 on Friday and to zero hours on Saturday.
According to correspondents of the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), the registration posts across huge swathes of Zambezia, Sofala, Nampula and Niassa provinces closed at 17.00, 18.00 or 19.00, using the power cuts as the excuse. The supervisors and the district directors of STAE (Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat) simply ordered the posts to close and sent the staff home.
The CNE never cancelled its instruction that on Saturday the posts should remain open until zero hours, and so the STAE directors simply usurped the powers of the CNE. Even if there were good, technical reasons for the power cuts, human ingenuity should have found a way to allow people in the queues to register despite the deadline of zero hours.
As it was, many thousands of citizens were unable to register on the last day, and this may threaten their right to vote in October.
The EDM director for Transmission and Systems Operations, Julio Chipuazo, told reporters on Sunday in Nampula, that the power cuts were due to an anomaly on the transmission line from Zambezia, which led to constant power cuts, particularly in the late afternoons (precisely when huge queues were building up at many registration posts).
“From 29 May to 2 June, we verified four disturbances in the system”, said Chipuazo. “From the analysis made, it was concluded that between 17.00 and 18.00, the power is being very heavily used”.
The electricity for northern Mozambique is generated at the Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi river in Tete province. The transmission line runs for over 1,000 kilometres. “The voltage drops”, said Chipuazo, “and it was during attempts to connect compensation equipment that the blackouts occurred”.
“This operation is not new”, he added, “but in these recent days, we are noticing anomalous behaviour. So we are assessing what is happening and designing actions to overcome this phenomenon”.
As a possible solution, Chipuazo said that EDM is implementing projects that could put an end to the problems. These are projects to install 400 kv and 220 kv high voltage lines, and the first phase is already under implementation. The projects cost between 100 and 120 million US dollars.
Millions more dollars will be needed, he added, to execute phases two and three “which will consist in extending a 400 kv line to Namialo and from there a 220 kv line to Nampula. If this is done, we shall experience days with greater stability”.
But the immediate alternative source of power, he said, is the Turkish Karpowership, anchored off the port of Nacala, which can generate 125 megawatts.
(AIM)
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