Electricity disruptions end today, says EWSA

The persistent load-shedding that affected several parts of the country for nearly a month will be no more by the end of today, the Energy, Water and Sanitation Authority has said. The regulatory agency said repair works on the Jabana substation, where damages to installations and vandalism has led to power supply disruptions, was successfully completed yesterday. EWSA said, last month, that power disruptions, which began on March 19, were due to the collapse of two 110KV towers transmitting power from the Jabana substation to the main substation in Gikondo.The towers succumbed to heavy rain, while they had also sustained immense damage caused by vandals, who broke pieces of steel from them.“We have delivered as we had promised. All works are complete and the load-shedding that affected homes and businesses due to the failings of Jabana will be no more,” Prosper Mubera Birori, the head of public relations and communication unit at EWSA, told The New Times yesterday.“It took us a lot of manual labour and money and we are glad it is over. We began a countrywide inspection of all electricity pylons and stations to ensure that they are in shape and that the challenges we went though over the last few weeks do not happen again,” he added.‘Heavy’ costThe damage cost EWSA 30 mega watts per hour through the electricity lines and although it had estimated to spend about Rwf6 million on repair works, the cost skyrocketed to over Rwf50 million, he added.“We worked day and night to ensure that electricity is restored, and up to now we are still working,” Simon-Pierre Habyalimana, the in-charge of Electricity Trasmission Unit at EWSA, said.“EWSA could have made Rwf84 million if the power was running in the last three weeks. This is a huge loss and we shall work hard to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” Habyalimana said.The utility body targets to connect 100,000 households every year

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Electricity disruptions end today, says EWSA