Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) has issued an apology over issues experienced by its prepaid electricity vending system over the weekend.
As a result of the system failure, many people found themselves in darkness as they were unable to purchase electricity through various platforms.
Briefing the media this morning, BPC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) David Kgoboko said the Corporation experienced a loss of power to its electricity vending system.
“Subsequent to the loss of power supply, the UPS system automatically kicked into the running of our vending system. Unfortunately, our system does not have an alarm to provide an early warning to our operations personnel when it goes onto UPS mode,” said Kgoboko.
Kgoboko said the abrupt shutdown that occurred after the Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) system could no longer hold and triggered the need for the ICT team to reconfigure the system hence the extended time taken to restore it to normal operations.
Kgoboko said the incident exposed some gaps in the BPC system such as lack of early warning, lack of an emergency back-up for the vending system, and third-party vendors not being able to continue serving customers when the BPC system is down.
“We would like to assure the public that these gaps shall be addressed to prevent a recurrence,” said Kgoboko.
Kgoboko who took over as the BPC CEO last month told the media that the Corporation has significant challenges which need to be addressed urgently.
