By Reagan Malumo
KATIMA MULILO
NORED’s marketing and communications officer, Frans Niikondo, has cited lack of proper electricity infrastructure at Katima Mulilo as one of the major challenges that tend to exacerbate the protracted problem of power supply to the town.
Power failures at Katima Mulilo have since become a chronic disease for most residents of the Caprivi Region. In most cases, when residents try to get to the root cause of the problem, they end up being tossed along a chain of power-managing entities.
One resident called it a disease of “go and ask NORED”; then a smart one at NORED refers you to NamPower; from NamPower it goes on until you are finally told to cross the border and ask ZESCO, the main power supplier in Zambia.
Meanwhile, the past few days have seen NORED with no other alternative but to endure the blame of failing to satisfy the demand of its furious customers after one of the company’s vending computers at the town got damaged due to alleged low power voltage being pumped into the bigger line by the Zambian counterparts, ZESCO.
For the past two weeks the situation has created long queues at the only power selling point that was left. This at some stages resulted in anarchy, with the public losing patience and threatening to storm the building as they competed to be served. The situation left NORED officials at the town with no option but to call the Namibian Police to come and restore law and order.
Niikondo tried to pacify the town dwellers and, as the situation stabilized, requested them to stay calm. He said the broken machine has been replaced.
He informed the media that NORED is committed to providing proper services to its customers, and it is because of this that it has now restored at least three vending computers at the town.
But what seems to be annoying the public is the inconsistency of power supply to the town. They say NORED has continually fed them with lots of unsatisfactory promises of being in the process of resolving the situation but, according to residents, nothing seems to be happening.
Niikondo further promised that, as part of its objective, the company plans to install vending computers 30??????’??