By Daniel Mukozho is the general manager of Palmline Investments, a private company that has entered into a PPP (public-private partnership) agreement with the Gwebi College of Agriculture to improve dairy production at Zimbabwe’s first fully residential institution of higher education. When the editors of the Brick by Brick magazine visited the college on 29 November 2022, Mukozho made a passionate appeal to the Ministry of Energy to help the dairy project succeed by imploring ZESA to prioritise it as one of the projects that receive constant electricity supply because of its national importance. Here is what he said:
“Electricity is a nightmare here. The government should prioritise us like they do with the mines. The government makes sure that electricity supply at the mines is constant so operations are not disrupted. But here, we are just like anybody else. We suffer load shedding like anybody else.
To get the ZESA people to come and do repairs or rectify errors, takes so long. So we really suffer in terms of fuel costs, because once you can’t get the overhead line supplied with energy, we have to use the generator. And I can tell you, we end up sometimes using 400 litres of diesel per week, simply because there is no electricity from ZESA. Sometimes there is just a simple fault, not necessarily load shedding.
a government institute where we have taken dairy as our niche area, which
makes the college different from other colleges … We are appealing to the
government to give us funds to buy more dairy cows
I don’t think we are being prioritised and that is a big issue. For a dairy project, you need constant power supply. We think the Ministry of Energy can help by liaising with ZESA to prioritise the work we are doing here, so we can get constant electricity supply. It is just a matter of writing a letter saying ‘we’ve got a very important project at Gwebi College. Please make sure there is little disruptions in terms of power supply as much as possible’.
Yes, I think the Ministry of Energy can do this. Right now, we are really in trouble because even where I stay, Gwebi College is the worst place I have seen so far where power can go any moment. If it is load shedding I can understand, but those faults can be rectified once and for all.
I wonder: Why are the faults so recurring when we’ve got a dairy project here. If I have got 5,000 litres of milk in the tank and the power goes off at night, somebody must come and put on the generator, otherwise the milk goes sour. When the milk goes sour, then I lose everything. And I have no one to blame. I cannot claim anything from anybody. So it’s not just waking up at night and starting the generator, it means we have to use diesel as well. So that one is a very big issue and a challenge for us.”
Mrs Shupikai Sibanda, principal of Gwebi College, also had an appeal to make:
We have vacant posts that we need them filled, so that we don’t run short of labour, whether they are at the dairy or security. We are surrounded by farmers whose workers at times come in and steal from here. Because this is a government institution, they take advantage and come and steal.
So we have a security challenge, and the vacant posts are going to cover security to protect government property. That is our cry. Our establishment needs a staff complement of 112, but we only have 90. So we are short of 22. We are short of 8 people in security, 12 general hands, and 2 specialised posts.
This should be done by the Public Service Commission. I think they have already started working on it, because this year we have received 6 people to fill some of the vacant posts.
Stanford Katonha, chairman partnerships, Gwebi College, also made an appeal:
Gwebi College is a government institute where we have taken dairy as our niche area, which makes the college different from other colleges. We are under the Ministry of Agriculture, not the Ministry of Tertiary and Higher Education, so we cannot get any assistance from ZIMDEF.
But we want to grow. So far we have been given 20 milking cows, and we hope that by the time Palmline Investments, our PPP partner, decides to leave Gwebi, we should be able to stand on our own. It means we should at this time be building our own herd, so that in the event of Palmline going, we would be able to continue using this milking parlour.
We should not only rely on Palmline, because it is a private company, it can simply decide to leave any day. Yes, they have said they are here for a long time but it is not a guarantee. We need to stand on our own, so we need to be supported by the government so that we can buy our own dairy cows.
We now have 20, we should be able to improve it to 100, 200, 300 in the near future, so that we can stand on our own. Palmline’s partnership is a start. We don’t have to over-rely or cry to Palmline always to make us grow. We should grow and be weaned.
So we are appealing to the government to give us funds so that we can buy more dairy cows. We can even import them from neighbouring countries if we are given the facility to do that.
