‘Govt Working Tirelessly to reduce Load Shedding’ – Energy Minister Matola

The Tonse-led Government has assured the public that it tirelessly working towards the reduction of load shedding.

Addressing the press this morning in Lilongwe, Minister of Energy, Ibrahim Matola, said it is not true that the end of the Aggreko contract will affect the power supply in Malawi.

Matola says, in 2017 the country was short of 78 megawatts to supply electricity to end-users and since Aggreko had the capacity, a contract was awarded to Aggreko to supply the 78 megawatts.

He says Malawi was still using the expensive Aggreko machines because the country had no independent power producers yet following the rise in COVID-19 cases.

According to Matola, the country had hopes that independent power producers would come and since they did not, the government resorted to Aggreko again and renewed the contract which now expired on 1st April.

He has however assured the general Public that there is hope as President Lazarus Chakwera is expected to commission Solar power that will add 60 megawatts to the grid, he adds that another 23 megawatts and 21 megawatts are coming from a GCM project.

Matola hinted that EGENCO will take over from where Aggreko stopped.

Matola says among the measure in place to minimize load shedding, the government has put EGENCO machines at Kanengo on standby to come in and assist when the situation gets worse.

The minister has since assured Malawians that government will do anything possible to make sure power is available.