Business hours affected by load-shedding
Many shops who do not have generators are forced to close their doors during the load-shedding period.
This was clearly visible in the Mbombela CBD on last Saturday morning
On one of the busiest retail days, store owners had to ask shoppers to evacuate their stores while they waited for the electricity to come back on.
This resulted in these shoppers hanging around, waiting for stores to reopen, while staff were left with little choice but to sit and do nothing.
“This is bad, because we are here wasting time, waiting for the shops to open again when we just want to shop and go to other places,” said one shopper, who only identified herself as Ruth.
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Another told Lowvelder that stores being forced to close will result in them losing a lot of money. “It is things like these that affect the economy.”
Some of the shops that were open restricted the number of customers who could enter. This was done to manage the situation and have full control of the activities going on in-store.
Lourens du Preez of Citybug said, “We are not really affected because we have a generator.”
Ignatius Ferreira, co-owner of H20 International said, “It is very frustrating. We struggle with Wi-Fi and computer connections every time we experience load-shedding.”
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Thokozani Gama, an employee of one of the affected shops said they were trading offline. “We still want to make money.”
