Mokaila in the dark
Gothataone Moeng | Tuesday March 18, 2014 12:41
Expected to update the House, and reassure the nation, on the power crisis, as shown by the past weeks’ 12-hour power outages, the minister spent the better part of his statement attacking Leader of Opposition (LoO) Dumelang Saleshando for his last week’s statement on outages.
Mokaila expended great energy into defending government and rebutting a statement made by Saleshando in which he blamed the power crisis on a vacuum of leadership and lack of vision in the ruling party.
Yesterday Mokaila said Saleshando’ statement created misconceptions and accused the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) president of attempting to achieve political mileage out of a “trying and unfortunate situation.” “What the LoO tried to achieve through the distortions is to appeal to people’s hearts, which are a source of emotions, as opposed to appealing to the intellect of the body politic.
“This is, of course, an easy way out but not the best as through distortion of facts one could be perceived to be entering the realm of intellectual dishonesty,” he said.
Mokaila denied the charge that government has been shortsighted in dealing with the country’s power issues, saying National Development Plans (NDP) 8, 9 and 10 dealt with provision of affordable power, the need for self-sufficiency and the creation of assets to make the country self-sufficient.
The policy direction was thus clear, with the issue of achieving self-sufficiency or having the necessary leverage to ensure that the country had the necessary wherewithal to construct a power plant well defined, Mokaila said.
“What failed the country was the project execution of the 600MW Morupule B Power Station. This is something I conceded in my two ministerial statements to this August house,” he said.
In his statement last week, Saleshando accused government of not delivering on their promises of the country reaching self-reliance.
Yesterday Mokaila said while government had proposed that part of the P500 million credit line extended to Zimbabwe should be provided for the Bulawayo Power Station, with Botswana expected to receive 50 percent share of the station’s output, the project was unable to get off the ground.
On the power station for 3x60MW at P425million that was expected to be developed by an Independent Power Producer (IPP), Mokaila said the terms offered by the IPP were unattractive and negotiations on the project could not proceed.
On the four units at Morupule B, Mokaila said Unit 1 is currently running and will be taken out of service for boiler modifications once the other three units are brought back into service.
Unit 2 is the only one that has not yet been taken over by Botswana Power Corporation (BPC), Mokaila said.
“The boiler has been modified as per the recommendations of the designers and is expected to be brought into service by the end of April,” he said. Mokaila said boiler modifications have also been completed on Unit 3, with the unit expected to be brought into service by end of March 2014.
Unit 4 was shut down early March due to boiler tube leaks, Mokaila said. He added that the boiler will be modified and the timelines of its being brought back to service are still being evaluated.