NIGHT WORK: POWER CUTS ADD TO ZIMBABWE'S MOUNTING WOES

- Zimbabwe's worsening electricity shortages mean power is often only available for a few hours in the middle of the night -- forcing furniture maker Richard Benhura to start work at 23:00 hours.

It is just one aspect of the country's dire economic difficulties as official inflation nears 100 percent and supplies of daily essentials such as bread and petrol regularly run short.

"If you want to work, you have to be here overnight and start when the electricity comes on until it goes off around 04:00 hours," Benhura, 32, told AFP as he made some wooden backrests for chairs.

At the open-air Glen View furniture market in Harare, Benhura welds steel frames for chairs and grinds off rough edges in the darkness, and then returns to do his manual woodwork in the daylight.

Zimbabwe - where the economy has recently lurched into a fresh crisis - introduced rotational power cuts of up to 19 hours a day earlier this year, forcing many to do their ironing or cooking in the dead of night. For Egenia Chiwashira, a resident of the poor Harare suburb of Mbare, the outages are a grim burden.

The mother of three in her 40s says she can barely afford to feed her family, let alone pay for a generator.

"To cook porridge for my children needs electricity, also for me to prepare myself something to eat," Chiwashira said, while stoking a fire she had made outside her house to prepare supper.

"We are always in darkness. It's not easy. Life in the city is tough without electricity. You have to buy firewood unlike in rural areas where you can fetch it in forests. "I can't afford to buy both wood and candles, so my children cannot do their schoolwork in the evening."