Parliament committees breathe fire
Members of the Parliamentary Committee on Energy and Minerals yesterday complained over slow implementation of the rural electrification drive despite legislators’ approval of budget for the undertaking.
Moreover, Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee has queried over additional costs amounting to 30bn/- incurred during the execution of various water projects in the country, demanding that disciplinary measures be taken against all officials who contributed to the poor implementation of the projects.
Parliament passed the Rural Energy Act, 2005 that established the rural energy fund to finance rural electrification projects but as of March (this year) only 4,393 villages or 36 per cent of 12,268 villages in the Mainland had been connected.
Irritated MPs demanded answers from the government on how it would supply power to the remaining 7,875 villages of the first and second phase which ended late last year.
Nominated MP Anne Kilango Malecela (CCM), said the number of villages which were reached during initial projects were few and it took nearly a decade. “Now, more than 60 per cent of villages have not been covered, how fast would you move to accomplish the plan in just five years,” she queried.
She urged the government to analyse and identify all the villages which have not been fully covered, to help implement the third phase of rural electrification that targets connecting all villages. John Heche, Tarime Rural legislator (Chadema) was concerned that some individuals were bent on sabotaging the project by pushing for personal projects.
“Some people with connections in the state electricity supply company-Tanesco have been using their influence to press REA to spend monies on unnecessary projects. “It’s high time that Tanesco starts extending services where REA had invested in electricity infrastructure,” he said. Another MP, Ms Suzan Kiwanga (Mlimba, Chadema) smelled serious fraud by contractors hired by the agency.
She revealed that part of scheme has been on transformer and transmission lines that end-up not working. “You find the contractor saying the transformer is 50kV but in reality it’s 25kV. Despite spending a huge chunk of monies the project will turn a white elephant as a number of villages will be compelled to total blackout,” she noted.
REA Director General, Engineer Boniface Gissima Nyamo- Hanga earlier explained to parliamentarians that the agency depends on government annual budgetary allocation and other sources.
These include contribution from levies of up to five per cent on the commercial generation of electricity to the national grid, as well as from development partners’ contributions to Special Purpose Funds for rural energy. “We also expect our funding from levies on petroleum products. But, in the FY 2016/17, the Agency received 388.87bn/- out of the anticipated 587.61bn/-.
These being 251.9bn/- or 51 per cent of 496.66bn/- generated as levies from petroleum product. We also received 22.7bn/- out of 37.7bn/- as levies from commercial electricity and 114bn/- out of 53.21bn/- from development partners,” he said.
The Director General said the Agency planned to spend at least 7tri/- to implement the projects but financial documents show a deficit of 4.7tri/-. The Deputy Minister for Energy and Minerals, Dr Medard Kalemani, explained that the Ministry was intending to engage private sector to reach all villages, some 176 villages that are out of the national grid.
“These are villages in islands and national reserves” he said, adding that the Ministry had appointed special engineer to oversee REA contractors while appoint a special manager at regional and district Tanesco offices to follow-up all REA funded projects.