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A 20 day electricity hiatus for businesses finally came to an end after the substation that caught alight at the corner of Green and Joubert Street was repaired.
A 20 day electricity hiatus for businesses finally came to an end after the substation that caught alight at the corner of Green and Joubert Street was repaired.
The substation, which does not have doors, exploded on a rainy day. Businesses in the area, however, are still to recover from financial losses. Likhaya Ndude of Eyethu Funeral Services said that they spent R8 000 on diesel. The parlour has to have its fridges on at all times as they keep the bodies on site.
"This has been a painful experience for us, it is a setback. We could not get our payments and we could not pay our creditors as we couldn't access our systems. The generator is just for lights and fridges," he said.
A&Y Automotive suffered a burglary as their alarm system was not working. "We don't have a generator. As a result we could not use our machinery. This created a major backlog and dented our image as we couldn't deliver on time to our customers. As if that was not bad, we had a burglary and lost machinery to the value of R20 000," said manager, Eddy Chukwuemeka.
Painting a holistic picture on the impact of the blackout on business, Border Kei Chamber of Business administrator, Adré Gainsford-Bartis, said that small businesses couldn't cope. She said that a mechanical workshop used R7 211.75 of diesel during the period while another spent R23 000. A fishery, she said, had to throw away stock worth R12 000 and used R6 900 on diesel. Their average monthly bill was between R4000 and R10 000 without disruptions.
"These businesses were already hit earlier this year for three months when the Western substation blew and were put under financial strain. Smaller businesses that couldn't afford generators had to close shop half days. They were unable to use speed points, meaning paying customers had to be turned away, resulting in revenue loss. We are happy that the issue has been resolved but hope that measures are put in place to prevent these businesses from losing revenue due to municipal outages," she said.
Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality spokesperson, Lonwabo Kowa, did not respond to questions.
