Sparks fly at high-voltage PAC
Mbongeni Mguni | Friday May 29, 2015 18:00
When his predecessor appeared before the committee last year, the Ministry of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources faced a barrage of questions from legislators frustrated by the lack of progress in resolving the country’s electricity challenges.
Only seven months into the new job, Abi found himself facing visibly agitated legislators yesterday and this time with more than just the electricity crisis to answer to.
Greater Gaborone is in the throes of a crisis that sees most households without water for 21 hours a week, a situation worsened by frequent unscheduled cuts.
Gaborone Dam has dried for the first time in 51 years and the stopgap measures are meeting with varied success.
And Abi, in his first appearance before the traditionally irascible committee, had to answer the hard questions.
Entering the PAC hearing, Abi’s face must have borne an expression of anxiety as both the chair, Abram Kesupile (Kanye South) and Tati East MP, Samson Moyo Guma, moved to assuage his fears.
“My teacher used to say ‘don’t worry about the exam; always try to understand your subject’. When you are here, we are trying to help each other. This is an interactive forum for us to best serve our people,” said Guma.
And with that the civilities were dispensed with and Abi – a 22-year veteran of the ministry – found himself in the firing line.
For the seven legislators present at yesterday’s PAC, electricity and water issues have been a perennial thorn in the flesh, with constituents asking hard questions and demanding answers, as loadshedding, water shortages and quality of supply have quavered over the months.
Guma’s constituents have asked their MP why their area is surfeit with water bodies and yet they face shortages, while in Gaborone Bonnington South, Ndaba Gaolathe has faced even tougher questions from urbanites vexed by widescale outages.
Yesterday’s PAC, therefore, provided the legislators with an opportunity to publicly seek answers from the ministry and secure commitments and explanations on the record.
Below are a few choice exchanges between the committee and Abi.
On Morupule B
Guma: “How many units are running at Morupule B and are we ever going to resolve its issues? I feel that Morupule B is not going to work and you may have to dismantle it. Remember that you are under oath and we have reports pointing to a different direction.
Abi: “We have two units running at Morupule B, being Unit 1 and Unit 2, delivering 290 megawatts. Last year, we conducted two sets of investigations one of them being a root cause analysis, where some of the issues noted were poor workmanship, quality of materials used and design. This has been extensively discussed.
The second was the gap analysis, which looked at the whole plant and what needs to be repaired. Those studies have been done and we have commissioned German firm, Fitchner to come up with work packages so that we can tender out for the people to repair it.”
Dithapelo Keorapetse (Selebi-Phikwe West): “You said the investigations revealed poor workmanship, design and others. Did you do your due diligence into this contractor before embarking on the project? What do you know about their track record in terms of previous work?
Abi: “Personally, I don’t know their track record. I don’t have the institutional memory, but about what happened at the beginning. But what I can say is that our own engineers helped us choose that company.”
Keorapetse: “When I say you, I’m not asking you personally. It’s about the government and the ministry. I’m trying to extract simple answers from you. If I built a house, I need to go around and see what else the company will have done.”
Abi: “I cannot give an answer to that. I can say that background check would have been done.”
Kesupile: “It’s not about asking whether you know; it’s asking whether the ministry knew.”
Abi: “Then I would say the due diligence and background were done.”
Guma: “In that case, I put it to you that this company does not have a good track record of building power stations of this size?”
Keorapetse: “Do you agree that they don’t have a good track record?”
Abi: “ I don’t know”.
Keorapetse: “Is Morupule B a disaster waiting to happen where an explosion will harm the environment and people close by?”
Abi: “No, it’s not. I can commit to a deadline of three years to sort out all the issues. We should brace for power outages during that period, but over time the situation will improve.”
Gaolathe: “I refuse to accept the explanation on delays at Morupule B because everything that the ministry has done over the past few years has never been on time, from Morupule B, Morupule A, Coal Bed Methane project and others. There’s nothing that has been done on time.”
Guma: “I put it across to you that there are people with vested interests in your projects and that’s why you are delaying them. You cannot say it takes ages to make a Power Purchase Agreement. I’m being very emphatic about this. There are vested interests here.”
Gaolathe: “I don’t think it’s your fault (Abi). I think it’s the political involvement at the top interfering in this. I have confidence in professionals, but the problem is on the political side.”
Guma: “You spoke about the 300MW brownfield and the 300MW greenfield projects from 2010 and we are still at tender stage. There must be something fishy happening inside there. Are there deals going on or you prefer other people? You cannot allow President Ian Khama to speak about projects and say something is going to happen, and as Parliament we approve it, then you don’t deliver.
Abi: “There’s nothing fishy. The process started well and it’s ongoing. It’s just that it takes time.”
Kesupile: “When you escalate a matter to the level of the President and he speaks about it in his State of the Nation Address, what is the level of preparation you have done before he speaks? How certain would you be that the project you are giving to the President to tell the nation about, is going to happen?
Abi: “I would say that the project would be in our plans and we would have identified the resources and preparations.”
Guma: “Should we ask the Auditor General to do a performance audit of Morupule B to see what the delays are?
Abi: “Yes, they can do that.”
Keorapetse: “Would you say a value for money audit is needed at Morupule B?
Abi: “I don’t know about that, but as part of the project closure, the funders will do a value assessment to see what was done right or wrong.”
On water
Guma: “Water Utilities Corp will appear before the committee, but you are in the ministry; chaos there isn’t it?
“Even where water is available, the infrastructure is dilapidated such as in the North East. There are constant breakdowns of pipes and no maintenance and my personal feeling is that the WUC is overwhelmed.
“The movement of the Water Affairs Department to WUC was not properly planned; it came in too fast. Do they have the resources for the current challenges?”
Abi: “ I will be the first to admit that in terms of its mandate, we have given WUC a mammoth task. It had a healthy balance sheet and they had to take over the whole of the country. If you look at the tariffs, they have not increased so much in terms of their ability to raise their own funds. They don’t have a balance sheet right now.
“One or two years ago, there was a thinking to raise bonds for some WUC projects and this was ultimately not possible because of their balance sheet. You even remember that sometime last year, they were unable to pay salaries.”
Guma: “That was our problem as Parliament. WUC was operating properly until we brought in the Water Affairs Department.”
Kesupile: “Parliament took that decision when the minister brought it as a proposal.”
Abi: “The failure was the failure to see that when there were councils and others outside of WUC, they received subsidies to purchase water from WUC. The level of revenue WUC was receiving from the Water Affairs Department was high. After the integration, the monies previously transferred ceased.”
With the benefit of hindsight, we should have seen how to continue some of these subsidies. Look at the remote area dwellers in settlements. WUC is not getting any revenue from that, but they have to provide bowsers there. We also know about the issues of dilapidated infrastructure and in some cases, water losses are up to 50 percent. At the end of the day, the WUC does not have enough resources to finance that and we are working on a proposal that hopefully will go to Parliament and cabinet on an urgent basis.
Cabinet knows that this is very urgent.”