Residents of Mzuzu have endured a dark start to the new year with most areas in the city going as long as 48 hours without power supply.
This is contrary to expectations of residents of the city. who at the onset of the rainy seasonthought the electricity situation would improve owing to increased water in all the country’s water bodies from which power is generated.
The power problem has also affected work for Northern Region Water Board (NRWB) whose water supply machines have since been rendered useless.
People of Chiputula, Chibanja, Katawa, Mchengautuba, Bishop and Luwinga townships are experiencing dry taps due to the problem. NRWB spokesperson, Edward Nyirenda, bemoaned the situation and said they have deployed a water bowser to the affected areas to help reduce the impact of the interrupted water supply on their clients.
“The board is facing problems in supplying water to clients; our machines are failing to operate efficiently due to power failure and this is regrettable,” Nyirenda said.
He added: “We are engaging the Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom).
Unfortunately, they say they are yet to identify the fault on their transmission lines, so we quickly thought of a way to rescue our customers.
On Tuesday afternoon, people of
Mzuzu and some parts of the Northern Region had a rude awakening of heavy rains accompanied by strong winds, which destroyed property, with reports indicating that the rains also damaged electricity poles along the transmission lines from Nkhotakota to Wovwe.
Escom Deputy spokesperson, Mervin Mchenga, attributed the situation to a fault that occurred on the Salima-Nkhotakota overhead line.
“For Tuesday, I am told there were rains which caused issues on some distribution lines,” Mchenga said.
Meanwhile, the Electricity Generation Company has come under fire for missing the deadline of installing diesel-powered generators in some parts of the country which are aimed at boosting the country’s power generating capacity.