“Yeast thrives in heat, too much heat causes bread and other like products to rot,” said Tswelelang bakery’s founder and manager, Nkwe Semenya. “When the power is out, we can’t keep this place cool enough.”
In addition to losing R25 000 worth of monthly revenue due to rotting products, their bakery nearly burned to the ground due to a faulty cable.
“Because of the electricity going on and off, the cable developed a fault, and eventually nearly burned down the bakery on 27 January,” said Semenya.
She said the bakery was mostly funded by private entities as part of their corporate social responsibilities, “The building was bought for us by African Bank and the DTI, gave us our start up funding.”
“We don’t function like a normal business, our aim is job creation and to alleviate poverty within our community.”
The bakery regularly gives bread to patients of the nearby Bophelong Clinic. “We also open up our doors on Saturdays for a soup kitchen where we feed local orphans.”
Being a small entity, Semenya said they had no insurance to cover the loss of income. “We had no choice but to take the advice given to us by the Eskom engineers that came to view and assess the damage.”
Semenya said the engineers advised her to fill in a claims form. “The administrator that was helping us fill in the form told us not to get our hopes up as the [process takes a long time],” she said.
Due to the loss in revenue, some of the bakery’s employees have left. “We pay people what we can but [nobody wants to work for peanuts],” said Semenya.
Eskom could not be reached for comment.
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