Tanesco blames wood suppliers for poor quality electricity poles.

Tanesco�s Managing Director Felchesmi Mramba.

 The Tanzania Electricity Supply Company (Tanesco) is now blacklisting suppliers of electricity poles citing extremely poor quality.

 

Tanesco’s Managing Director Felchesmi Mramba told The Guardian over the weekend that the quality problem after its own pole manufacturing plant was privatised.

 

“Tanesco used to have its own factory for producing the poles and it had no problem with the quality of the poles,” Mramba said.

 ‘We started receiving substandard poles after our factory was privatised,” he explained.

 

The Tanesco MD receives the product from the suppliers whose some of them are after profit making,” he said.

 

“We have now undertaken several efforts to address the problem including inspecting and testing the standards of all poles before procurement,” he detailed.

 

“If it is established that they are substandard the supplier is blacklisted,” the Tanesco’s Managing Director declared.

 

Mramba went on to point out that apart from testing the poles and blacklisting unscrupulous suppliers, the company is now working to adopt the use of concrete poles in place of the wooden ones.

 

However, he clarified that; “We will continue to receive wooden poles which meet the set standards as we slowly shift to the concrete poles.” 

 

News to that effect was conveyed to most media outlets over the weekend during a media familiarisation tour of the firm’s various plants across Dar es Salaam.

 

Mramba told reporters during the tour that the state owned utility firm is planning to switch from use of wood for electricity poles to cement built ones in an effort to bridge supply gaps and also as part of the firm’s green economy efforts to help fight climate change.

“We intend to establish a subsidiary firm to manufacture the cement poles,” Mramba said and noted that “…the subsidiary will have a production plant in each region to ensure supply meets demand.”

 

Notably, Tanesco has for a while now suffered short supplies of their traditional wooden poles as the community places ever increasing burden on the country’s forests and also as the country suffers the effects of climate change.

 

“ Since 2013, our suppliers have been failing to supply us with wooden poles on time and even when they do, the quality is somewhat low compared to what they used to deliver,” admitted power firm’s Managing Director.

 

Explaining that the wooden poles are provided by both local and international firms, Mramba said they used to last for at least 20 years but some of the poles they are getting now are durable for only one year.

 

‘The poor quality of the poles could be as a result of shortage of quality timber…or the chemicals used to treat the poles,’ he suggested.  “Given the worsening impacts of climate change, it might become more and more difficult to get quality timber for the poles,” lamented the energy firm managing director.

 

“The switch to cement poles will help discourage cutting down of trees and mitigate effects of climate change,” he noted.

 

Journalists visited various substations across Dar es Salaam including Gongo la Mboto, Kipawa, Mbagala, Kiwalani, Kinyerezi, Ilala City Centre and Mikocheni.

 

However giving the news about the plan, Mramba did not say the time such a firm would be registered or start working.

Neither did he mention the degree of the shortage for the wooden poles.

 

However, at times the firm fails to connect some of the citizenry due to the shortage of the wooden poles.

 

In another development, Mramba said that the firm plans to replace all ordinary metres with prepaid electronic metres commonly known as Luku. 

 

“This will be done within the next three years …the project will have covered the entire country,’ he said.

 

He also revealed that, Tanesco will henceforth, mount all the metres on electric poles to avoid public meddling with them.

 

Expounding on improvements done at the Kinyerezi power plant, Tanesco Projects Manager, Samson Jilima said they are expecting to add 150 MW to the national grid to strengthen power supply service.

 

 “As you see, we have almost completed 80 per cent of the needed work and we are now in the final stages before connecting to the national grid,” he said and assured the public of reliable steady electricity by the end of this year upon completion of the substations in June.