CEASAR MBEWE writes
@SunZambian
MAKENI Villa residents should report any corruption practices by ZESCO workers that are dispatched to work in the area, says spokesperson Henry Kapata.
Mr. Kapata told Lusaka Sun in an interview that no ZESCO worker was allowed to charge or solicits for money from of its customers if the problem being worked on was not through their fault.
“ZESCO workers are on a salary so there is no need for them to start asking for money from residents; doing so is a serious offence and anyone found guilt will be dealt with. I urge all the Makeni Villa residents to report any activity of this kind to ZESCO headquarters” Kapata said.
Mr Kapata said that it was the responsibility of the residents to confirm with the ZESCO customer service if the problem being worked on in the area was lodged to avoid random reporting on the same issue.
“And to those who say we haven’t worked on a certain problem kindly note that we have millions of reported issues in a day so if you have not been given a complaint number try to get one from customer service because we have situations where the same problem is being reported more than four times and that makes our work a bit tricky” Mr Kapata said.
Recently residents in the area complained about ZESCO workers asking for money to rectify the faults.
Meanwhile residents in Makeni Villa have thanked Mr Kapata for attending to their complaints and hoped to see change from ZESCO workers who had been asking for money from them.
One of the residents, a Mrs Silungwe of plot 184/44 welcomed the idea of reporting such issues.
“I am happy that someone senior in ZESCO has heard our complaint and I hope that when we report something, the company will quickly come to our aid,” she said.
In December last year, some applicants for electricity connection in Kafue’s Shimabala Area threatened to protest to the ZESCO headquarters after the ZESCO planner, from ZESCO Kabwata, who was handling their cases failed to issue them with quotations within the three months stipulated period for processing of applications.
The people accused the named ZESCO planner of deliberately delaying the process in order to force the applicants to bribe him in order to speed up the process.
The planner openly differed with the applicants when he told them he would stop working on their applications if they tried to pressure him because he was merely trying to do them a favour since he was not from ZESCO Kafue.
The planner only decided to continue working on the cases after the applicants threatened to complain to his bosses at head office.
