Free electricity connection starts next year—official

Ministry of Energy says the much-awaited free electricity connection will start next year as guidelines to operationalise the project are already in place.

The ministry’s director of energy Cassius Chiwambo said in an interview on Wednesday that consultations on how the free electricity connection can be rolled out have been completed.

He said: “We had to look at the policy, but the most important thing was to look at the guidelines and these are done.

“The policy takes time as you have to do some consultations, but almost everything is done now in terms of the policy and we are set to go.”

Chiwambo said to operationalise the project, government looked at the computations of the cost and it has shown that this initiative can be undertaken without problems.

He could, however, not disclose how much government would forgo by connecting electricity for free, but said the government is looking at the end benefit of the project instead of how much it would forgo.

In an interview on Wednesday, Consumers Association of Malawi executive director John Kapito indicated that free electricity connection is both an economic and social development that benefits local citizens.

But he said the project is one of the most expensive social programmes for a poor country such as Malawi to implement.

The free electricity and water connection were some of the campaign promises by the Tonse Alliance.

Early this month, Minister of Information Gospel Kazako told journalists in Lilongwe that free water connection will be rolled out in April next year. It costs Escom about K282 000 to connect domestic consumers, with urban customers paying about K93 000 and those in rural areas pay K5 000.