Recently the minister of energy said that ZESA would compensate those who lost their property due to power surges. Presumably, this means if there is a fire that is attributed to ZESA, those who lose their property in such a fire would be compensated. It also implies that if your device e.g. fridge gets fried during a power surge you might be entitled to compensation.

There is an insurance policy to cover for such losses and a process of validation will be done to ascertain the loss before compensation.

Minister Soda Zhemu

This all sounds so easy and reasonable until you really start to think about the specifics of such a promise. There are also qualifications like “validation” int he phrase he used. I doubt it’s a mistake. It means that when you make a report ZESA will want to verify your claim that it’s their fault. It’s not clear how this is done or how long it takes between the time you make your report and when the validation is carried out. It’s also not clear who makes the validation and if you can appeal the outcome of such a process.

ZESA finds it hard to attend to faults on time. Now they have time do go around doing validations? It’s almost certain it will take a long time for you to get your money too. How are they going to compensate you? Using ZWL/RTGS? Most assets are sold and bought in USD. Who is going to do the valuation of your property?

My advice is if you are a household, get a surge protector to protect your gadgets. Waiting for ZESA is not wise. So why is the Minister of Energy even bothering with these promises? Probably due to a few high profile fires that have seen people lose their property. This makes it a political issue and these guttural noises are probably meant to address that.

Buy ZESA tokens here