Customers forced to pay ESCOM’s faults-clearing technicians just for them to have power restored

The flier ESCOM distributed two weeks ago

* Anthu awa akumafuna ndalama awa the moment wangoti tikuonani inayake akumabwera — 5 minutes ntchito yatha

* One customer has been experiencing power fault for over a month now and received almost seven fault reference numbers but nobody visits to rectify it

By Duncan Mlanjira

While Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (ESCOM) emphasises that clearance of electricity faults is done at no cost to the customer, there are strong indications that some customers are in complicity by willing to pay the bribe asked for in order to be rendered the much-needed service.

ESCOM management distributed a flier to the public some two weeks ago through social media, indicating that they strongly condemn the behavior by some of its faults-clearing technicians who are demanding money to clear faults.

The public power utility service provider emphasised in the flier that the malpractice is against ESCOM Code of Conduct and stressed its commitment to serve customers as enshrined in the Customer Care Charter since clearance of electricity faults by ESCOM is free.

But soon after the flier reached the public domain, several customers sneered at it, hinting they are willing to pay because if they don’t, they are not served in time.

The trend was ignited today when a corporate customer (name withheld) cried foul over inefficiency of faults-clearing services at their premises, disclosing that an ESCOM cable got burnt on Friday, which was reported the same day and was escalating the report by keeping reminding the ESCOM faults department.

The company reported that on three occasions, an ESCOM team visited the area and had a cable with them but all the time they indicated to the management of the affected company that the cable was for another client but the technicians were asking if they could “discuss” for them to ignore the other customer. 

Frustrated, the company’s management took to social media to disclose the ordeal they have suffered as they cannot afford not to have power for four days.

He complained that this was the same trend that they had to go through in order to buy diesel for the past 4 days for the backup generator at 300 litres a day, whose challenges of getting the commodity was exacerbated by the critical fuel shortage.

“Kodi zikatele mukumatani kwanuko (when faced with this crisis, how are you solving this?” he asked, to which an observer attested that the ESCOM technicians do indeed rush over whenever a customer indicates they would be compensated for their effort to visit them (“Anthu awa akumafuna ndalama awa the moment wangoti tikuonani inayake akumabwera — 5 minutes ntchito yatha ndipo eeehh ai”).

Another observer chipped in to say he had been “experiencing a power fault for over a month now and received almost seven [fault] reference numbers [but nobody visits to to rectify the it”.

Another commentator lamented that if that is being experienced by a corporate company, “one can only imagine how much worse it can be for [low income earners’] areas like Chinsapo, Chilinde”, hinting that in such a scenario, it can take ages.

Another also attested that he had spent two months without power in his workshop such that he lost a lot of revenue, revealing that when the technicians visited they “at first demanded K250,000” before  “another team asked for K300,000 [but eventually the fault] was sorted out without paying anything”.

Mwafulirwa Ndawona Dennis was blunt, saying: “ESCOM is the worst [service provider] when it comes to responding to faults”, while Sofia Kachigamba indicated that she was so furious she feared she could utter unpalatable words, opting just to disclose that at her shop all her fresh foods got rotten after one week without power.

Daniel Mpesi advised that perhaps self-service was needed by buying four 16sq mm of armoured core cable to replace the current aluminium twin cable and it should be underground.

But he was advised that doing that was illegal as that is tampering with ESCOM property unless arrangement was agreed upon with the utility company, which its technicians themselves can handle.

ESCOM is the biggest victim of vandalism of its infrastructure, whose replacement costs the company a lot of money from its revenues and it is always hinted by ESCOM itself and other stakeholders that most culprits of these acts of sabotage are disgruntled former employees, who got fired over malpractices against the company.