Tanesco fires seven senior staff

By Devota Mwachang`a

Tanzania Electric Supply Company Limited (Tanesco) Managing Director, Eng Felschemi Mramba speaks to journalists yesterday in Dar es Salaam

 Tanzania Electric Supply Company (Tanesco), one of the public firms facing government scrutiny is now taking measures to clean the institution with the sacking of seven senior officials implicated in embezzlement and theft cases.

 

Addressing journalists yesterday in Dar es Salaam, Tanesco Managing Director, Felchesmi Mramba said the officials had been sacked over the span of the last two months in a move aimed at restoring discipline amongst its staff and bringing an end to the culture of corruption that had long plagued the public sector.

 

Mramba said for a long while now, Tanesco customers had reported complaints they faced from the staff of the government owned power monopoly utility including abusive and disrespectful  languages, soliciting corruption and delaying services.

 

“We wishes to inform our customers that we have started working on their complaints and over the period of two months  we have sacked seven senior officials linked to various malpractices, including managers, accountants and engineers,” he said.

 

Short of naming them, Tanesco Managing Director said, the seven officials are from different regions across the country including North-Kinondoni and Ilala in Dar es Salaam as well as others from Katavi, Shinyanga and Kagera regions.

 

“Already several of them have been dragged to the court this very past Saturday” he said reassuring the public and stakeholders that the company will continue to shape and discipline its staff.

 

“We have a customer’s complain number via which the public can report any ill acts conducted by the company’s staff,” he said.

 

As for ongoing power cuts, he said the company acknowledges the inconveniences it causes and blamed it on dilapidated infrastructures.

 

“The fact is that some infrastructure used to generate power are old and do not meet the current rapidly increasing demand,” he said.

 

 “For instance, many substations here in Dar es Salaam were constructed between 1980s and 1990s, by then, residents of the city were only 3 million, now the population has increased to more than 5 million, so the infrastructures are overloaded,” he detailed.

 

However, he reassured all parties that the company has initiated efforts to correct the situation including various power generation projects currently in progress.

 

“After their completion, it will help reduce the problem of power cuts,” he said but also admitted that “...to some extent, the power outages are contributed to by the implementation of the said projects.”

 

Moving on, said the company was continuing with countrywide special operations to nab electricity thieves who were illegally connected to national grid.

 

“We will divulge their names and lodge cases against all suspects...so I would like to caution those who in one way or another are engaged in this malpractice to surrender themselves to our managers at their respective regions,” he said.

 

In another development, Mramba denied media reports that Tanesco intends to buy 700,000 electric poles from South Africa worth USD115m he said such bulk amounts of money could be used to invest in an entirely new power plant that could generate more than 100 megawatt.

 

“The truth is that we have some pole suppliers from within and outside the country who are engaged in accordance to the Procurement Act,” he said and detailed that in fact; “Tanesco had registered its own company to manufacture concrete poles to replace use of wooden ones that were substandard.

 

Notably in that development, the state power utility recently blacklisted suppliers of electric poles citing poor quality.

 

‘The concrete poles shall help reduce unnecessary power cuts experienced during replacement of spoilt wooden poles,’ he summed up.