Businesses in the township hardest hit by load-shedding

Business people from around the Kathorus area, as well as community members, are very furious about the negative impact caused by load-shedding to their businesses.

Nelly Mohale (57), owner of Top Notch Fish and Chips in Vosloorus, said, “When electricity cuts, it takes between four and six hours for it to come back. We lose roughly R400 to R600, depending on the number of hours of load- shedding. Sometimes, we unplug our appliances to avoid them to be affected by electricity when the load-shedding period ends.

Imagine if this will happen at night, we will unplug our appliances, by the time it comes back our appliances will still be unplugged. Appliances will remain unplugged till the following morning. This will make us lose a lot of stock that will get rotten or it will cost me to go back and reopen the business at night if I want to avoid the electricity damaging my appliances,” said Mohale.

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She said she wishes Eskom can find ways to bring the load-shedding issue to an end as it affects them. “For some of us, our businesses are our only source of income. If we lose money like this, we will not have money to support our families.”

This publication also visited the Global Internet Café, also in Vosloorus, where twin brothers Thabo and Thabang Mosoeu run their internet café business. This is what Thabo had to say, “Each time this load-shedding has to happen, it damages our Wi-Fi. Our router uses fibre cables. They are getting damaged when electricity comes back. We always replace them. That is not all, we also have to pay for call-out fees. The total amount of money we use daily is between R1 600 and R1 700,” said Thabo.

Thabang said it is upsetting to turn people back.

“We do not only get upset because we lose money at that time but because we also lose our customers to our competitors in town. Secondly, we are paying rent here. Our landlord does not reduce rent because our business was affected by load-shedding. This also affects our profit,” said Thabang.

Thabang pleaded with Eskom to notify them as well as they do in other townships, like Spruit, where people from Eskom drive around the township, informing the community about the load-shedding schedule.

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“This will help prepare us and not lose our appliances,” Thabang told Kathorus MAIL.

He added that two of their latest computer LCD screens are broken and since the load-shedding is ongoing they have not yet made enough money to replace or fix them.

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