Maputo, 30 Dec (AIM) – Mozambique’s publicly owned electricity company, EDM, has recorded an accumulated loss of 30 million meticais (about 470,000 dollars, at the current exchange rate) during 2023, as result of damage to equipment by criminals across the country.
Among the vandalized equipment are electrical cables and transformers. The criminals remove metals, particularly copper and aluminium, which they then sell to scrap metal merchants, sometimes across the border in South Africa.
According to the Chairperson of the EDM Board of Directors, Marcelino Alberto, who was speaking on Friday, “at the moment, we have an accumulated loss of 30 million meticais resulting from the replacement of vandalized equipment.”
Alberto explained that this was a concern not only for the company, but also for society as a whole, “since there are frequent cases of neighborhoods being deprived of power for several days because of vandalized electricity cables.
In extreme cases, he said, the theft of electricity cables has resulted in deaths by electrocution.
Alberto also said that the replacement of vandalized infrastructure uses resources that could be used to expand the electricity grid in other regions of the country.
According to Alberto, for this year, the aim is to reduce electricity losses by two per cent, a target that is already close to being achieved.
“At the moment, in terms of energy losses, the company has made a very big effort to reduce the losses”, he said, adding that in the past, the level of achievement in loss reduction efforts was 1.7 per cent.
Alberto said that the company, during 2023, made over 390,000 connections to new customers.
“The company’s projections were for 350,000 new connections by the end of 2023, which means that the achievement exceeded the target by 11.4 per cent”, he said.
(AIM)
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