Has ZESA warned of four-day power blackouts?

CLAIM: Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) has said power cuts may soon extend to a continuous four days a week under ‘phase four’ load-shedding.
VERDICT: False

By ZimFact Staff

This week’s Financial Gazette, under the headline [Paywalled] ‘Relentless blackouts sap Zim’s agriculture’, claimed that ZESA had indicated that power cuts, which currently average 18 hours a day, could soon worsen to four-day power cuts.

“In the meantime, ZESA has said that it may soon escalate its power cuts to phase four, which will mean at least four days a week of complete darkness,” the Financial Gazette reported.

ZESA spokesman Fullard Gwasira told ZimFact that this was not true.

“That’s nonsense. We have not put out any statement to that effect. We only have two stages of load-shedding, which were are implementing right now,” Gwasira said.

According to a load-shedding schedule produced by the ZESA’s power distribution subsidiary, ZETDC, Stage 1 power cuts are within the morning and evening peak periods of 5am to 10am and 5pm to 10pm, respectively.

However, due to diminished supply at a time when demand is at its peak, load-shedding has largely been implemented outside the published power-cutting schedules, or Stage 2.

“In the event that the power shortfall increases beyond the planned limits, load shedding will move into Stage 2. These are additional areas that will be switched off as per schedule when the shortfall is higher for the particular time,” ZETDC says.

CONCLUSION

The claim that ZESA put out a statement warning of ‘phase four’ load-shedding “which will mean at least four days a week of complete darkness”, as reported by the Financial Gazette, is false. The power utility only has two stages of load-shedding and is currently implementing the second and final stage, which sees cuts extending to an average 18 hours daily.