Mutharika is part of current brownouts
Former president Peter Mutharika should be the last person to blame electricity blackouts or brownouts on the Tonse administration. In a statement this week, Mutharika scoffed at the current administration for the endless blackouts that have affected everyday life. Admitted the Tonse administration has not acted with speed to tame the power crisis after the January 19 2022 destruction of the Kapichira hydro power station, which took out 129.6 megawatts (MW) or 30 percent of power supply from the national grid. Agreed the administration also goofed to decommission Aggreko gensets which were adding 78 MW to the grid.
But Mutharika has no moral higher ground to sneer at the current state of power generation and supply because he has nothing to show from his six-year reign in terms of improving power generation in the country. In 2014 when Mutharika stepped into State House, he found 350 MW against a peak demand of 470 MW. In 2017 Electricity Generation Company added 16.57MW thermal diesel generators making a total of 367.3 MW of installed power generation.
Six years down the line in 2020 when he was voted out of power, hydro power generation was still at 350 MW. The six years he was in power was more than enough time for his administration to further develop hydro power plants in the country. Hydro power is far cheaper than all other sources of power such as solar and wind. Plans from previous administrations were already there for the country to expand hydro power generation. But in the whole six years he was at the helm of this country, all that his administration will be remembered for on power generation was the hiring of the expensive Aggreko Limited generators which were supplying 78MW from gensets. For example, in four years—2017 to 2022—the Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) was made to part with a dizzying K112 billion for hiring the gensets and fuel. Of this amount, K80 billion was used to purchase diesel to power the generators. And theft of diesel by staff.
Aggreko was a poor deal smacking of cluelessness, recklessness and corruption on the part of government. No wonder, the Tonse administration wasted little time to decommission the generators at the end of an extended contract. As if running the generators was not bad enough for Escom, the nation learnt that in January 2018 a whopping 4.2 million litres of diesel for the generators was stolen from the power utility. It was a sad day. The suspects: tanker drivers, stores clerk and guards. The stolen fuel was worth K3.7 billion. I smell recklessness and corruption.
The saddest part of it is that the country would not have known about the theft of the fuel if it were not for Vice-President Saulos Chilima after he had fallen out of favour with his boss Peter Mutharika and the Democratic Progressive Party, spilling the beans at the launch of his UTM Party at Njamba Freedom Park in Blantyre. This was theft at a grand scale that could only have been done by a well co-ordinated and oiled cartel vertically as well as horizontally connected and not just comprising operatives such as tanker drivers, stores clerks and guards. That is how stinking the Escom-Aggreko Limited deal was and how it has cost the taxpayer who has been forced to foot the high electricity tariff to cover the expensive deal. Consumers are still paying for the decommissioned generators.
In 2014 when Mutharika went into government, total electrification in Malawi was 11 percent against a population of 15.6 million. The country’s demand for electricity has been growing at between 6-8 percent annually. To meet the growing demand, the country needs to add an average of 157 MW annually. This was a far cry for the Mutharika administration. And when he was leaving government in 2020 still less than 12 percent of 18 million was connected with strong men to the electrical grid. For the 80 percent of the people living in rural areas, access to electricity remains less than 2 percent. With such dreary statistics obtaining under his rule, Mutharika would be more dignified if he kept on issues to do with electricity than say things which only show he has nothing writing home about. He has contributed more to the electricity problems in the country than the other way round.
