Energy and Power Development Minister Zhemu Soda said that members of the public who assist ZESA workers to come and fix faults in their neighborhoods are not forced to do so.
Reports claim that ZESA customers across the country are sometimes asked to contribute various amounts of money to enable ZESA to attend to their faults.
According to Open Parly, some ZESA customers have contributed towards buying transformers, transformer oil and other service parts.
The issue was recently raised in the National Assembly by Makoni Central MP, David Tekeshe (MDC Alliance).
In his response, Soda said people who help ZESA do so voluntarily without any kind of compulsion. He said:
That is not Government policy where people are now expected to buy fuel and donate their cars for ZESA technicians to use for repairs or any work related to electricity. This is witnessed especially from farmers.
The farmers kindly ask for technicians to come and assist them by sending transport so that they immediately attend to their problem because sometimes they are told that technicians would have gone out to attend to other faults.
What is happening now is that any technician who volunteers to do such a job, they are supposed to sign a document that they are volunteering to offer those services as well as fuel to ZESA and this is for accountability purposes.
People are not forced to do that but they do it voluntarily. What is happening right now is, those who volunteer to assist ZESA are supposed to complete those documents and there should be supervision to ensure that work is properly done.
Sometimes ZESA workers may also go to ZESA and claim that they used their own fuel after being given that fuel by the customer. I thank you.
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