Editorial
We have received information that some senior staff at power utility ZESCO in cohort with some corrupt politicians in government are still pursuing the route to importing wooden poles from companies based in South Africa and Zimbabwe despite clear indications that these poles can be sourced locally at cost effective prices.
One of the problems these corrupt and rent seeking people disguised as public leaders have drugged their feet to source from ZAFFICO is that the company is now publicly listed and it is very difficult to get kickbacks from transacting locally.
ZAFFICO by its listing on the Lusaka Securities Exchange – LuSE makes the company subject to report significant transactions publicly. Which basically threatens to make the transaction be done at an arms length with transparency. Even if interests at ZESCO and their sponsors try to overprice the poles deal with say ZAFFICO, all the money will flow into ZAFFICO’s audited accounts.
When we as Zambian Business Times – ZBT asked the ZESCO management team why they opted to import when they could easily and cost efficiently source from local suppliers cutting off import duties and transportation costs, we were told that ZAFFICO has no capacity to supply the quantities needed.
However, when we put this question of capacity to ZAFFICO, they simply restated as even publicly indicated on their website that they have an annual capacity of producing over the total number of poles that ZESCO intends to import.
ZAFFICO at their Pole treatment plant which adds value to Eucalyptus logs located in Kalulushi on the Copperbelt Province, has capacity of producing 140,000 treated poles per year to meet the Country’s demand for treated poles such as power transmission, fencing and construction poles.
When we further checked with ZAFFICO on ZESCO allegations they they are failing to deliver and have an outstanding order with ZESCO, ZAFFICO indicated that the pole treatment process and seasonality of harvesting means that deliverly of poles can not be done in one day, but with planned ordering and procurement, the forest and timber company delivers the indicated 140,000 per annum.
Any sensible and sober person can see that it’s ZESCO’s procurement interests and graft tendencies that have created an artificial requirement for one time bulk deliverly to justify the requirement for imports. To create a scenario that ZAFFICO and other local suppliers can not meet the requirement.
In fact, you can even see that if this order was given early in the year to ZAFFICO and other local suppliers, the poles required would have been delivered in batches and finished by the third quarter or now as we proceed into the last quarter of 2022.
If ZESCO wanted to increase the delivering due to limited monthly capacity of the treatment plant at ZAFFICO, they would have even backed the forest company to expand its treatment plant, a process that can be undertaken within the year.
Moreover, turning this into a local purchase order by ZESCO will stop the unnecessary forex outflow from the country. Zambia’s currency is always under pressure because of continued preference to import even on items that can be sourced or manufactured locally.
Our informed advise to ZESCO is that go and sit down with LuSE listed ZAFFICO and come up with a deal that is in the interest of Zambia. This deal will just burn your fingers and ruin your personal financial futures. The examples are many of some of your predecessors who have now become even more familiar with court processes and procedures than even some our lawyers working in Corporates as company secretaries or legal advisors.
Our reminder to some few selfish ZESCO senior management team members who are pushing for this deal, is that today, you may feel entitled to abuse public resources, to be powerful and allow yourselves to be used to push corrupt political agents agenda’s to get cuts or rents from questionable deals, but when tomorrow comes, you will be made to account. Some will end up even spending more than they will get from such deals defending themselves in court, while others will end up in Jail.
