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Botswana: Francistown Does Not See the Light
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Mmegi/The Reporter (Gaborone)
11 March 2008
Posted to the web 11 March 2008
Patricia Maganu
The Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) has complained that people in Francistown, Maun and Dukwi have not grasped the message to save power.
Speaking at a bulb exchange programme at SOS village in Francistown this weekend, BPC Corporate Services Manager, John Helmand, admitted that "people in these areas are not responding to the messages".
Helmand said that in Francistown, the power use doubles in the evenings compared to during the day.
"During the day when people are at work and factories and offices are open, Francistown uses 45MW of power and after hours when people are at home cooking and bathing, the consumption almost doubles to 75MW," he said.
He said people in this area have to do something to reduce the tremendous amount of power consumed in the evening. Helmand said that if this continues the country will have a problem.
"This is a regional problem we are having, and it is going to be for the next four years," he added. He said Batswana have to adhere to messages by BPC to try and alleviate the problem.
"We will have to do something about it. For about four years, we will have this problem," he said.
As one of the efforts to help alleviate the power crisis in the country, BPC came to SOS village in Francistown to change all the bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL) that are more energy sufficient.
"We have swapped all the bulbs in the village for new ones that last longer," he said. "CFL bulbs last for about three years while these other ones last for three to six months," he added.
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Helmand further revealed that for every CFL bulbs consumers could save P4.40 as compared to the other bulbs.
Francistown SOS was the second station BPC visited after Tlokweng to replace the ordinary bulbs with CFL bulbs.
The CFL, he said, uses 80percent less energy. Helmand also said if one million bulbs were switched to CFL's, 30MW would be saved. That is enough for all of Francistown.
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