Court lifts Egenco executives’ injunction
The Industrial Relations Court (IRC) in Blantyre has lifted an injunction two Electricity Generation Company (Egenco) top executives obtained on Friday against a decision to send them on forced leave.
The stay order, issued by IRC chairperson Austin Msowoya on October 9, said Egenco chief executive officer Engineer William Liabunya and director of corporate services and company secretary Videlia Mluwira remain on forced leave to pave the way for a forensic audit to probe how Egenco responded after cyclones Ana and Gombe damaged infrastructure in 2022, leading to persistent and prolonged power rationing.
Reads the order: “The order of injunction granted by this court to applicants restraining the respondent from implementing their decision to send the applicants on forced leave to conduct the audit until determination of the within matter or until further order of the court (sic) be and is hereby stayed pending the hearing inter partes, of applicant’s motion for an order of urgent interim relief o injunction and disposition thereof or further order of this court, whichever occurs earlier.
“Applicants in the interim continue to be and remain on leave as and subject to the conditions prescribed in the respondent’s memo placing said applicants on said leave until disposition of applicants motion for an order of urgent interim relief or injunction, final disposition of the matter herein, or further order of this court, whichever shall occur earlier.”
In letters dated October 3 2023 to Liabunya and Mluwira, Secretary to the Treasury MacDonald Mafuta Mwale, in his capacity as shareholder, said the forensic audit will investigate how Egenco responded after the two cyclones damaged infrastructure, leading to persistent and prolonged power rationing.
The shareholders said they noted that the parastatal was subjected to devastating damage due to Cyclone Ana in January 2022 and Cyclone Gombe in March of the same year.
The decision comes after President Lazarus Chakwera, during the opening of the Malawi Bureau of Standards office complex and laboratory and Malawi International Trade Fair in Blantyre on May 17 2023, accused Egenco management of lack of urgency in the handling of the restoration of Kapichira Hydro-electric Power Station in Chikwawa, which took a year and three months to complete.
Tropical Storm Ana damaged infrastructure in January 2022, taking off about 129.6 megawatts (MW) of electricity from the national grid. However, Malawi Government waited until July 2022 to source $60 million on behalf of Egenco from the World Bank for the energy restoration project.
In September last year, Egenco indicated that Kapichira would be restored by December 22.
However, the deadline was missed after it emerged that the project, which involved restoration of power generation and redesigning the whole dam structure to make it resilient to floods, faced operational challenges which stalled the works for some days.
