When we heard the suggestion from the Mayor that we should bury high voltage electricity cables, we looked at the calendar to see if it was April Fools’ Day, says Zesco Spokesperson Henry Kapata.

Mayor of Lusaka Wilson Kalumba, recently suggested that Zesco should consider getting rid of Pylons and instead bury high voltage cables and create room for more residential plots in Lusaka.

But speaking on the Kwacha Good Morning Zambia ZNBC TV show yesterday, Kapata asked if the City council could give Zesco US$70 million needed for such an exercise, when there were retirees queuing up for their pensions at the local authority.

“First of all when we heard that statement from the mayor, we checked on our calendar whether it was Fools’ Day because re-routing of pylons is a very expensive exercise that one can ever take… because all these lines that we are talking about the 132, 188, they are connected to several sub stations. Remember that we did the re-routing of zesco poles on Chilimbulu road, Burma where RDA paid us about 4 million,” said Kapata.

“And re-routing of those pylons we are talking about 70-80 million dollars for a start for us as Zesco limited to open up that chapter. And so does the council have that money to give us when everyday we watch people lining up for their retirement payments? I think they must take certain priorities than talking about re-routing pylons because that is practically impossible. I don’t think as Zesco limited we will open up a chapter to talk about it.”