Halt export of electricity, save small businesses- Mundubile cautions ruling party

Leader of the opposition in Zambian parliament Brian Mundubile has urged the government to stop exporting power to replenish local power usage.

Mundubile said halting power export would reduce the hours of load shedding to save the small scale businesses country wide.

He said on Friday in statement issued to the local media by Brian Hapunda that lawmakers received the news of load shedding from the Minister of Energy on the floor of the house with great sadness.

Mundubile said this was especially that the economy of the country was performing poorly adding that people were no longer living but barely surviving.

“We are talking about people that run saloons, barbershops and small welding shops among others that are barely surviving. Six hours of load shedding kills off these businesses completely,” he said.

Mundubile said the decision to begin exporting electricity was premature.

“Had the Government looked into the future, they would have waited before they embarked on exporting power,” he said.

Mundubile said this would have managed generation from Kariba which was going to sustain the supply of electricity into the future.

He said the indications he was getting were that there was a pre-alert to Zesco regarding the challenge of low levels of water but that Zesco delayed to take action.