By CHARITY MOONGA  and MOFFAT CHAZINGWA –
ZAMBIA was on Monday evening plunged into a countrywide power outage which affected eight provinces.
The outage occurred around 19:30 hours, lasted for over six hours and was caused by a disturbance in the power system that affected supply from Kafue Gorge.

. Kapata

Zesco spokesperson Henry Kapata said out of the provinces, only Southern and Western provinces were not affected by the blackout because they were being serviced by the Victoria Falls power station.
The blackout was experienced on the Copperbelt, Lusaka, Central, Muchinga, Luapula, North-Western, Northern and Eastern provinces.
Mr Kapata, however, said that by 09:00 hours yesterday, power had been restored in some parts of the Copperbelt and in Lusaka.
He said the power disturbance in the remaining provinces was being resolved and he was hopeful that the affected areas would have power restored by the end of yesterday.
Meanwhile, three miners at Konkola Copper Mines (KCM)’s Konkola Deeps (KDMP) in Chililabombwe were on Monday trapped underground following the power outage.
The miners were trapped at number Four-Shaft after the mine experienced power outage which caused significant disruption to the company’s operation.
KCM public relations and communications manager Shapi Shachinda said the three miners were rescued by KCM emergency response team.
He said none of the three miners were harmed as a result of being trapped underground.
Mr Shachinda said the power outage caused significant disruption to mining operations for KCM.
He said KCM lost power supply on Monday at about 19:30 hours and was restored about 09:57 hours yesterday.
He said the company’s 24 megawatts emergency generator set at Konkola was activated after the power outage and this was supplemented by the 46 megawatts of imported power from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through the Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC) for emergency supply to key areas.
Similarly, Mopani Copper Mines (MCM) and Lubambe Copper Mines (LCM) said the companies were equally severely affected by the power outage.
MCM public relations manager Cephas Sinyangwe said the power outage hit the mining firm from 19:30 hours on Monday to about 04:50 hours yesterday.
Mr Sinyangwe said this resulted in all plants underground operations being closed resulting in severe financial loss.
He, however, said the operation affected could not be quantified.
Lubambe Engineering manager Jack Pelmonte said the company suffered estimated loss of US$600,000 following the power outage which occurred at about 19:30 hours and lasted until yesterday morning.