Escom board inspects power shocks

 Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) sounds optimistic to restore power across the Shire Valley by Tuesday, ending a three-week nightmare caused by severe floods triggered by Tropical Storm Ana last month.

Power transmission lines in the Shire Valley districts of Chikwawa and Nsanje crashed to the ground amid three-day stormy torrents that battered the Southern Region last month.

On Saturday, Escom board members visited the worst-hit parts of the valley to appreciate the severity of the damage on the national grid and restoration works currently underway.

Speaking after the tour, Escom’s new chief executive off i cer Kamkwamba Kumwenda said: “We expect to fully restore power transmission in the Shire Valley within three days as our teams have completed almost 95 percent of the rehabilitation works.

“However, these are just temporary works. Permanent restoration will take a little longer due to procurement processes as some accessories cannot be sourced locally.”

Among the stops, the power supplier’s board members toured Kasisi, where heavy winds and floods took down four towers erected in 1989 and left five others bending precariously.

They saluted engineers and maintenance teams that are working day and night with local villagers to restore the 132-kilovolt transmission that supplies power to the Shire Valley.

The floodplain haunted by incessant blackouts is home to the country’s largest sugar factory at Nchalo cane plantation as well as cotton ginnery at Ngabu in Chikwawa South and Bangula in Nsanje.

During the visit, emergency teams drawn from all parts of the country were seen working closely with the locals to restore power supply.

Escom director Overtone Mandalasi, who chairs the board’s technical and project committee, asked for an expedited procurement process to revamp the ravaged grid.

In an interview, he said: “The storm was quite a big one and the damage was extensive. Going to Kasisi area along the Shire .” River from devastated  communities at Bereu, I am not surprised with the great damage caused, but the major problem is that the restoration works will be slightly delayed not because the workers on the ground are not doing what is necessary, but because the materials they have are not enough for them to finish the works soon as possible

Kumwenda credited the remarkable progress in power restoration to the maintenance teams that have endured three weeks of hauling spares and emergency towers across flooded zones on their backs and using boats.

As a quick fix, Escom has temporarily replaced some devastated iron towers with wooden poles and easy-to-assemble emergency towers imported from Canada.

However , the transportation of the replacements was slowed by intense destruction of roads, especially the M1 which suffered three cuts near Kamuzu Bridge.

The swollen Likhubula River broke its banks and ripped the country’s largest transport corridor on its way to the equally flooded Shire, where 99 percent of the country’s electricity is generated for the benefit of almost 11 in every 100 households.

The disruption in transport halted trucks carrying the wooden poles

 and parts of the emergency towers at the damaged spot for nearly a week as blackouts haunted the Shire Valley and several parts of the country.

To overcome the barrier, Escom has engaged casual workers to carry the accessories across the pits created by floods.

The Escom board also visited Kapichira Hydropower Station where floods and debris choked power generation after ripping dam walls and a dyke specially designed to divert the Shire River to the power dynamos.

Mandalasi implored the Electricity Generation Company (Egenco) to speedily rehabilitate Kapichira Hydropower Plant, which produces a third of the power for the national grid.

According to Egenco chief executive officer Liabunya, the power producer requires K18 billion to restore the country’s second-largest power generation site.

“We plan to restore power production at the station and while it’s under production, we will come up with a more resilient dam design which we would properly prepare to construct afterwards,” he said.

Egenco spent about K5 billion to repair a 20-metre section of the dyke ripped by Cyclone Idai in March 2019.

Tropical Storm Ana killed over 40 people and displaced over 60 000 households in the country