TANESCO overwhelmed by high demand
by Nyamanoko Bwire
As more customers apply for service lines from the Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO) in Arusha, the company’s regional manager, Christopher J. Masasi has said that there are 2,142 others on TANESCO’s waiting list.
According to Masasi, 305 of them had applied for power connections since the beginning of this year.
The regional manager explains that, inadequate budget and lack of existing power networks in most areas of Arusha are the main reasons behind the delay in connecting their new customers with service lines.
It is reported that 395 customers have already paid for the connection fees and relevant costs but are yet to have their service lines established.
The TANESCO regional manager adds that, at the moment service lines are being built for customers who had paid for them in November 2001.
On average, TANESCO gets about 150 new customers every month.
Since the beginning of this year, TANESCO has established a total of 251 new service lines which have been activated.
Currently TANESCO has a total of 41,327 customers in Arusha region, 32,078 of them are in the municipality, 4,279 in Arumeru, 1,896 in Monduli and the rest are in Mererani, Karatu and Mbulu areas.
The year 2002 general inspection covered about 1,805 customers. About 120 of them were found to be using electricity power illegally.
In total, 1,436 people have been discovered to have illegally connected to the power lines either through dubious means or by-passing the meters.
TANESCO has collected over Tsh.83.6 Million from the culprits in the form of fines or sales of once mishandled power.
Again there are about 45 cases in connection with illegal use of electric power most of which are in court while others are still under police investigations.
Meanwhile, in their report to the Minister for Energy and Minerals, E. D. Maokola-Majogo, employees of TANESCO outcried the fact that their biggest problem was in collecting payments from customers most of whom they said, are stubborn when it comes to settling their bills.
However, TANESCO has managed to collect Tsh.1,795,811,909 this year alone and Tsh.1,599,846,768.25 of that came from Arusha municipality.
