The purpose of this petition is to demand the creation of a financial sanction for ZESCO's failure to supply reliable electricity to the Zambian people in the FORM of a power rebate that compensates the USER with 5 free units per ever hour of a power outage every single time ZESCO has an unscheduled outage that exceeds 2hrs.

This should be in effect until the date that ZESCO operates with at least 2 or more competitors. This is in line with other system providers who are taxed/fined for poor service in the Telecoms space by ZICTA. 

ZESCO is in a state-owned monopoly in the Electricity Distribution industry, specifically retail / domestic electricity. This is situation give ZESCO no incentive to serve the customer with Quality and Reliability because electricity which is a critical resource in today's world is therefore in the hands of 1 state-owned entity. 

Electricity affects a person's right to an adequate standard of living, physical and mental health, right to work and make a living and access to education. Therefore it is imperative that we hold ELECTRICITY SUPPLY to the same if not a higher standard than TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS who have demanded an uptime of 99% uptime. 

In that regard, we demand that the Bodies addressed in this petition put together a system that FINANCIALLY SANCTIONS ZESCO for pro-longed outages or taking too long to bring the system back up. The suggestions are; 

1. Every time there is an unplanned outage caused for any reason, Zesco must bring power back within 2 hours or else. Should they fail customers experiencing the outage should be given complimentary 5 units of electricity for every hour that ZESCO takes longer than 2 hours to resolve the outage. 
2. Planned outages experienced by a consumer should not exceed more than 87 hours in a year. Should they exceed that the above mentioned 5 units/hour compensation mechanism should be triggered. 

This should put ZESCO in a position where they must be aware of the time taken to resolve outages or else it will affect their costs of doing business and thus giving them a financial incentive to resolve the problem as well as compensating the USER for the outage.