POWER RATIONING HITS TANZANIA AGAIN
The national power company TANESCO has announced yesterday that power rationing would be getting worse in coming days and weeks for the mainland and Zanzibar, as water levels in the main reservoirs of the hydro electric dams were continuing to fall as a result of insufficient rains and ongoing drought conditions.
Combined with thermal power plants also running below capacity, reportedly due to a lack of enough diesel to run them, this will leave the country short by as much as 250 MW capacity, leading to rolling black outs aka ‘load shedding’, when industries, manufacturers, businesses, hotels and resort but mainly households will find themselves without power and having to resort to the expensive use of stand by generators.
In particular the hospitality industry has warned of the consequences of this development, as combined with runaway inflation and record lows of the Tanzania Shilling against major international currencies their business environment is becoming increasingly difficult to predict and to manage.
Safari operators too have complained to this correspondent of the new measures, claiming that running their offices is becoming erratic in the absence of mains power while some of the venues they regularly use for lunches or to buy cold soft drinks along the main safari routes are often now without power, unable to render services as is expected of them.
Asks this correspondent in closing why our power companies are always way behind demand struggling to close the demand and supply gap instead of moving ahead of demand peaks by installing, if necessary using private public partnerships like Bujagali in Uganda, the added capacities needed in anticipation of growing consumption of electricity.
