The electricity business is capital intensive and hence tariffs are steep. Tariffs are not determined by the earnings of customers as the costs simply have to be covered. If ZESA were to subsidize domestic customers they would still push up industrial and commercial tariffs and the prices would still be pushed to the consumer. What you are advocating is what the government did and led to the demise of ZESA. I remember at one time we were paying monthly electricity bills which were less than the price of a pint of beer, all at the insistence of government that customers must be protected from higher tariffs.

If customers cannot afford grid electricity they should not use it and should look for alternatives and government must make it easy through policy formulation. Why is it that in Botswana, which has per capita income several times ours, domestic customers use gas for cooking? The reason is that electricity is expensive and using gas to cook costs a small fraction of electricity costs. ZESA is forced to import huge amounts of power to cover peak demand.

I will not venture into the import duties on renewable energy products that can enable people to use free solar energy!

Its also unfortunate that the electricity business requires a lot of technical skills to function. If ZESA cannot pay engineers and technicians good salaries they simply pack their bags and go taking away the skills that are required to run things now and and when the company secures funding for recovery. Thats the reason why i am writing from outside the borders of Zim now and the skills are in demand all over the world.

There is nothing absurd about foregoing what you cannot afford. Price controls have never worked and in my view they contributed big time to the mess we are in and never benefitted the marginalised. Rather ask government to intervene in other ways like direct subsidies and good policies