Zanzibar Electricity Corporation ZECO under-performing

Shirika la Umeme Zanzibar ZECO likitumbuiza

The performance of the Zanzibar Electricity Corporation has been called into question as a large number of citizens raise concerns about unsatisfactory services.

Information from ZECO says that customers who request to have meters closed in their streets are waiting for a long time, some two, three to six months.

In addition to meters, other services including emergency maintenance,  customers are reporting that ZECO technicians take a long time to fix.

More information gathered from within the organization shows that there have been some groups that threaten the efficiency of the work while the staff themselves, especially at the lower level, complain about the poor support they get, along with delays in dealing with their various claims.

The second vice president of Zanzibar and the leader of government businessmen in the Council, recently in December 2022 said that the government was making efforts to ensure that there are equal opportunities in providing public services.

Recently, the government of Zanzibar reduced the cost of electricity connection, a program that had a specific objective to create an environment for customers to access electricity service.

“The government has reduced electricity costs for its citizens. Now it is the responsibility of the Zanzibar Electricity Corporation (ZECO) to ensure that citizens who need electricity are connected immediately after making a payment. There should be no unnecessary delays,” he said and asked the workers to abandon corruption, theft and bureaucracy, instead they should work with integrity,” Hemed Suleiman Abdulla said.

The Second Vice President of Zanzibar, Hemed Suleiman Abdulla then recently made a surprise visit to the ZECO Gulioni Headquarters where he was expressed dissatisfaction with the performance of the company.

During his visit, the Second Vice President was clearly not satisfied with the conduct of the failures and improper action.

Talking about the issue of electricity connection to the people, the Second Vice President said there are more than 3000 people waiting to be connected to electricity.

He gave one month for the citizens to be connected to the service.

He said that the issue of delay in connecting the citizens to electricity clearly shows the existence of loopholes of corruption for executives and explained that the Government will not tolerate any executive who tries to engage in any kind of corruption.

With that Hon. Hemed has expressed his dissatisfaction with financial issues, especially the collection of fees and asked them to close the loopholes in order to control the collection of fees and increase the national income.

The Second Vice President of Zanzibar has advised the Management of the Zanzibar Electricity Corporation to prepare a good Payment System, a system that will lead to transparency and good debt collection.