ZESCO Limited recently announced that, the current power load shedding in Zambia would worsen because the electricity firm has lost an additional 150 megawatts (MW) due to the shut-down of the Kafue Gorge Power Station to allow for repairs.

“The energy deficit has been compounded by the general power deficit that is being experienced in the Southern African region as imports are not available,” the statement says. ZESCO immediately increased load shedding to take care of the 150MW loss.

The new power cuts affects all customer categories: residential, commercial, agricultural, industrial and mining.

“We would like to reassure our customers that ZESCO engineers and the contractor are working round-the-clock to rectify the problem. ZESCO will provide an update on the repair works as soon as more details become available.”

The troubled power utility apologised to customers for the power blues and appealed to all customers to use energy efficiently by switching off unnecessary appliances such as lighting in unoccupied rooms, geysers, motors and other processes.

Dr Mwanawasa said this in reaction to Zesco’s announcement that it was increasing load shedding following the shut-down of a machine that developed a fault at Kafue Gorge power station on Wednesday.

The President said although he had not received the details of the latest problem, all he could say was that previous events were caused by factors beyond Zesco’s control and by sheer sabotage.

Dr Mwanawasa said Zambia was not the only country facing power outages in the region and that Madagascar was also complaining about the same.

He said South Africa had greater outages than Zambia and that Zimbabwe was also facing serious power problems.

“It will be easy to jump on Zesco and say Zesco is to blame. I blame it on the fact that there is a lot of industrialisation taking place in the region, which has increased the demand for electricity.”

As Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) chairman, he has asked for a meeting of SADC ministers of energy to meet soon after a meeting of senior executives of energy companies.

He said the meeting would discuss the strategies that the region would adopt to address the energy crisis and that the matter would later be discussed at a SADC summit in April.

Meanwhile unconfirmed reports from certain media sources have included Botswana among the countries the South African power utility is to terminate supplies to.The move appear to have surprised the Botswana authorities as Eskom chief is reported in the Citizen newspaper to have said: "Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe will now no longer be fed from South Africa's grid. Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland face partial cuts".

Botswana imports 75 per cent of its electricity primarily from South Africa. Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) and Eskom recently renewed the supply agreement. When contacted for comment, the Botswana Minister of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources, Ponatshego Kedikilwe, expressed doubts that Eskom's chief executive could have been reported accurately. "I will be surprised if there could be such insinuations as the two utilities have binding agreements. We would expect our counterparts to contact us should there be any changes to those agreements."

"Both Eskom and BPC are members of the Southern Africa Power Pool (SAPP). The working relationship between Eskom and BPC is very close and information flow is effective to enable all members of the SAPP to effectively manage the situation.