Thursday 21 September 2006, by PowerNell. It took some time before I actually laid my hands on it, but now I have it in front of me: the announcement of Tanesco that was published in the newspapers last Saturday. In this announcement Tanesco gave the full load shedding time table for the Dar es Salaam region, and urged customers not to work at night and not to waste any power when it is available.

Appeal Tanesco to customers

"TANESCO Management, once again, reminds its esteemed customers as follows:
They should not work at night as this will increase the load and defeat the purpose of load shedding. When power is available to their premises, they should use it carefully to avoid any waste. Lights in empty rooms should be switched off. Machines and appliances not being used should also be switched off. Customers are requested to refrain from using decorative lights. In order general, power should be used sparingly by domestic, commercial and industrial users so as to save power in order to conserve meagre generation resources at hand. Firms and individuals with large generators are requested to run them so as to increase the overall amount of power available in the country."

Save electricity!

I fully agree with the call to save electricity. One of the most frustrating aspects of this whole load shedding thing is that we have no control. We don"t have an overview of what is going on, we don"t have a clear perception of when power will be restored and we can"t do anything to bring the solution any nearer. Except... to save electricty. We all have an interest in making the situation not worse than it already is. So yes, we could make a valuable contribution by switching off appliances that we are not using. What I don"t understand is the call "for firms and individuals with large generators to run them to increase the amount of power available." What does that mean? Should I keep my costly generator running even during Tanesco hours? Does Tanesco want us all to go bankrupt?? I can"t even affort to run my generator at daytime!

Website Tanesco

Something else. One would expect Tanesco to publish the industrial time table on its website. This load shedding is disordering the lives of millions of its customers, and it would be a nice gesture to them to give them at least the possibility to download the time table. Or is Tanesco presuming that no one has power anymore anyway to check the internet? Apparently. Have a look at their website: www.tanesco.com. The homepage is hilarious ("Tanesco. We light up your life") but worse is that it hasn"t been updated at least since 2005. In this crisis situation, one would expect some more info. As I said, one of the most frustrating aspects of this whole thing is that we lack insight. A lot of people would appreciate a clear overview of the available megawatts in the country, an overview of the taken short and long-term measures and a time table of when the ordered power plants are expected to arrive in the country.
Related website: www.tanesco.com