Escom, Egenco explain power outage at Kamuzu International Airport
Officials from Electricity Generation Company (Egenco), the country’s main producer of power and sole power supplier Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) say there had been no power at Kamuzu international Airport (KIA) because of heavy rains.
The officials say the heavy rains forced some electricity poles down and power to be cut off at the airport and surrounding areas.
This unavailability of power at the main airport in the country caused delays to take off of a South Africa bound Malawian plane.
Ministry of Transport and Public Works says the power outage at Kamuzu International Airport was as a result of lack of fuel to power standby generators.
The Ministry’s spokesperson James Chakwera said the airport has been facing persistent long hours of power outages which led to fuel shortage.
“We have no power since 8pm last night and we did not have fuel to power our automatic standby generators, that’s why we have this situation. We always have enough fuel but we are frequently facing power cuts hence using more fuel…but we are working to normalise the situation” said Chakwera.
He said their generators use up to 58 litres of diseal per hour. This means for the 12 hour black out that the airport has experienced since last night – they would have used about 696 litres of fuel.
Malawian Airlines public relations manager Joseph Josiah described the delay as a huge inconvenience to passengers.
Josiah said: “It’s a huge inconvenience to passengers, particularly those with onward connections out of Johannesburg. Again, it disturbs the rest of the day’s operations—our evening flights.”
Japanese government handed over a $6 million solar equipment to generate a maximum of 830 kilowatts (KW) of electricity, which is enough to supply power to the airport, including nearby staff residences
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Dont just blame ESCOM and EGENCO, THIS WAS ENEFFICIENCY WITH THE ADL STAFF AND MANAGEMENT
This is laziness of the highest order how hard is it to purchase genset fuel? And what the hell is happening to the solar farm? Do we expect the Japanese to come and manage it for us? Lets be serious pliz.
Our leaders are just doing nothing,,,nothing that they don’t know what to do, because they have nothing to do.These people are useless. We can not grow as a country if we always wait a problem grow bigger and everyone see it,,,just because we want people should be praising as for nothing. How can we be still talking of same issues for 54 years of independent? You people watch out.
Minister Bagus what do you say? Perhaps you can now stop taking bribes from shops and restaurants and supply new generators to the airport and take your cut? Opportunistic thief!
The airport people are being economic with the truth. Firstly am a resident of Lumbadzi and has been here for over 30 years living within the ADL area power cuts are rare so let’s not totally believe what MTPW is telling the nation. Let’s not hide our ineffectiveness under Escon and Egenc.o. KIA has four sources of power namely ESCOM, Solar Farm, the generators and state of the art UPS The Japanese gave us a solar farm right acrosd the terminal building. Tell us if this is also not working and if so whose problems is it. We di have… Read more »
Can’t agree more my brother, this is total BS too many. Ma masters and phds in this country are very useless.
Under the wise and dynamic leadership of Professor Tipp-Ex, this is what should be expected of Malawi, ndiye aziti Singapore, my foot 😡
Were the power issue positive, Kutsaira would have frothed praising APM for foresighted leadership. Being power supply failure, the minister leaves the explanation to management to fend for themselves.
This is disgraceful and shames Malawi. How can we run an International Airport without a continuous supply of electricity. The power outages are ruining our country and making it a laughing stock to foreigners. A country simply cannot function without power 24/7. This is the 21st century and we cannot even supply our country with power round the clock. How can we possibly develop? This surely is the main priority above all else. Dzuka Malawi!