Marondera Central legislator Caston Matewu has cast doubts on government's claim that it successfully synchronised Hwange Unit 7 and was now feeding into the national grid adding that his constituency is getting only two hours of electricity per day.
Matewu who was posing the question to the Minister of Energy and Power Development in a parliamentary session said the electricity situation in Marondera had since worsened.
Government recently said it had added 300 megawatts to the national electricity grid.
"What the citizens had been assured is that once we roll out Unit 7, there is going to be more electricity in the households but it has now gone even worse. There is now a continuous and substantive lack of electricity.
"In Marondera for example, we only get electricity for two hours at night. In the day, there is nothing," Matewu said.
Energy minister, Soda Zhemu, said the power situation has been depressed and the synchronisation of Unit 7 that was done on March 20, is still undergoing commissioning tests where it shall be operating at various performing levels.
"It (Hwange Unit 7)started off at 50, moved to 75 and as we speak, it is sending out around 200 megawatts but it shall be scaled up to 300 with time as they continue to do their compliance tests," Zhemu responded.
The minister revealed that the dilapidated units at Hwange Power Station were exuding problems.
"Our intention would be to rehabilitate the old units with the intention of restoring the performance to the installed capacity of 920 megawatts. As we speak, today Hwange is sending out 303 megawatts into the grid and we are also receiving electricity from Kariba.
"We are still at 350 megawatts. It is our hope that as we begin the month of April, water allocations are going to be reviewed by Zambezi River Authority so that we ramp up on our production of electricity from Kariba," he added.
Even with the synchronisation of Unit 7, according to Zhemu, electricity demand is still higher than the supply.
"We are looking forward to the completion of the expansion project by bringing in Unit 8 which will come after April but precisely in May, according to the targets that Zimbabwe Power Company has on bringing that unit onto the grid."
