JCM Power, a Canada based firm investing in the country’s energy sector, has said it targets creating over 300 jobs for Malawians at its solar farm construction sites at Katawa and Golomoti in Salima District. President Peter Mutharika launched the project on Monday.
JCM Country Director, Phylip Leferink, said on the sidelines that the majority of staff on the sites would be Malawians. “There would be about 350 people working through the project. We have some experts coming from Europe and others from China, but we will employ as many local community members as we can,” Leferink said.
The company targets to start supplying 60 megawatts into the national power grid mid next year. Leferink said investing in solar power generation would address electricity challenges the country has been facing. “The benefit of solar is that it is a tariff itself; we will be selling at $0.08/KWhr which is cheap compared to the cost of power in Malawi. We are excited considering that there is about 60megawatts of diesel gnerators currently installed and we will try to offset that,” Leferink said.
The two sites are expected to become operational by July next year. The firm is constructing solar energy producing farm which will have 230,000 solar panels on 2 by 1 meter on a 168-hectare field.
(Source: The Daily Times Malawi, 6th December 2018)