Date Of Article: 3/27/2003
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Overflowing lake worsens Escom’s woes
By: Aubrey Mchulu
Steadily-rising water levels in Lake Malawi and the upper Shire River which threatened to submerge the Kamuzu Barrage at Liwonde on Wednesday evening forced authorities to fully open the Liwonde flood gates, a development that has further reduced Escom’s power generation capacity from 140 Megawatts to 64 Megawatts. Secretary for Water Development Ben Mbewe said in an interview from Lilongwe that stakeholders including Escom on Monday decided to fully open the barrage, built to regulate and control the flow of water in Shire River and Lake Malawi, after water levels on the upper side of the Shire rose to between seven and nine inches from below the road surface. “We don’t have to point fingers at each other because the situation is very serious to be just talking about it casually,” said Mbewe. “Things are out of hand, the lake is overflowing and we have to regulate this by way of fully opening the gates at Liwonde.” Mbewe said the stakeholders agreed to gradually open the gates until Wednesday evening when they were fully opened, thereby increasing the speed of water from the normal 210 cubic metres/second to between 300 and 500 cubic metres per second. He said ideally, when fully opened, the gates are supposed to be left for two days before they can be closed again. But Mbewe in the current situation, he cannot say when the gates will be closed because Ministry of Water officials from Lilongwe have just been dispatched to assess the situation. Escom Marketing Manager Wiseman Kabwazi said on Thursday the opening means more trash flowing downstream thereby blocking screens at intake points of Escom’s power generation plants hence most places will have no electricity from Wednesday night. “Due to the trash we now have only two machines left running and the situation is very critical especially on Escom customers,” he said, adding that Escom management was discussing with Ministry of Water Development officials on the situation. Escom also said in a written announcement on Thursday that it will keep its customers updated on progress being made. Three weeks ago, Escom’s system generation capacity was “severely reduced from 240 Megawatt to 140 Megawatt due to flooding of Nkula B power station on March 9, 2003 as a result of a pipe burst”. Nkula B produces 100 Megawatts of Escom’s generation capacity of 240 Megawatts against a demand of around 200 megawatts. Since then, blackouts have been the order of the day for both industrial and domestic electricity consumers and Escom said in a published statement on Thursday that its restoration programme will see the current power rationing being reduced by around 60 percent by the second week of April while the whole situation at power stations is expected to normalise by end May 2003.
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