Bosses not aware of sabotage
2009-05-07 08:45
Maputo - Cahora Bassa management has said it was not informed of an alleged foreign plot to destroy the hydro-electric dam, according to a report by Mozambique national news agency AIM on Thursday.
"This came as a complete surprise to us. At no time did the police tell us the dam was under threat," Paulo Muxanga, chairman of the dam operating company HCB, reportedly told AIM.
Muxanga said he had first heard about the supposed plot from media reports.
On Tuesday, national police spokesperson Pedro Cossa told reporters at a weekly briefly in Maputo that police were holding four foreign nationals, including a 21-year-old South African citizen, for allegedly trying to sabotage the Cahora Bassa hydro-electric dam.
The others were a 28-year-old Botswana pilot, a 50-year-old German soldier and architect and a 30-year-old Portuguese hotel worker.
The four had allegedly attempted to put a corrosive chemical in the turbines of the hydro-electric dam on the Zambezi River.
Power crisis
Cossa said police had confiscated 500kg of the yet to be identified corrosive substance.
"The suspects were caught putting the substance into the dam's turbines," said Cossa.
No further details were given and investigations were under way.
He did not reveal the names of those detained.
The South African foreign affairs department on Wednesday said it had requested consular access to the arrested South African citizen.
National television channel, Televisao de Mozambique said in a report on Thursday that President Armando Guebuza had called for calm.
Guebuza, who was speaking to reporters at the end of a two week long presidential visit in the northern provinces of Niassa and Nampula, said police should be left to investigate.
Cahora Bassa, which produces 2075MW short of its potential of 14 000MW of power, is touted as one of the solutions to the power crisis in the Southern African Development Community region.
The dam supplies power to South Africa, Mozambique and Malawi.
The dam was built by the colonial Portuguese government in 1974 and in November 2007, ownership of the dam was transferred from Portuguese control to the Mozambican government.
- SAPA