The Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi says it has budgeted K10 billion for its meter migration project which targets to replace conventional post-paid meters with split pre-paid meters. The project largely targets domestic users of electricity.
Escom embarked on the project in October last year and according to the Corporation’s Revenue Manager, Lyton Moyo, the project has now been successfully rolled out to the whole country.
Moyo said Escom has deployed its technical staff across the country where they are conducting demarcation exercises to fully effect the migration process.
“We are targeting to get every household on the pre-paid facility and so far, we have spent K5 billion to initiate the project. The whole project will cost us K10 billion,” he said.
But people that we engaged accused Escom of rolling out the project without proper planning, citing challenges of inadequate payment points as an example.
Moyo, however, said the Corporation has budgeted the cost of setting up new payment facilities within the total budget for the project.
“We are aware of that problem and when we were launching the project, we knew that we would require setting up more payment points. We are going to be making announcements in the media on where people can go to pay for electricity but in the meantime, we also urge our customers to make use of mobile payment platforms,” he said.
Escom says the project will be completed in December this year. At its successful completetion, Escom customers will be able to control and manage their electricity usage and also have the option to transfer electricity units when moving to a different house.
Escom is also targeting to improve revenue collection, minimise bad debts as well as reduce billing queries which are common with post-paid meters.
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