Business community concerned over power outages
Following the continuous citywide outages that have been plaguing the residents and businesses of Pietermaritzburg over the past few weeks, representatives of the business community have voiced their concern.
According to the Msunduzi Municipality, these outages are the result of a shortage of funds to address ageing and vandalised infrastructure, which has been exacerbated by last week’s hail storm that devastated the city and left some residents without electricity for 48 hours.
On Monday night, Msunduzi Mayor Mzi Thebolla attended a meeting with disgruntled residents from the Northern areas who expressed their dissatisfaction and frustrations at the prolonged power outages throughout the suburbs and city.
Chairperson of Msunduzi Economic Development Agency (MEDA), Kantha Naidoo, said that it is embarrassing that in this modern age, the city is still exposed to such prolonged outages.
“It is even more sad, if the rumours are correct, that the residents were without electricity because of a “go slow”. This only reaffirms that our municipality lacks work ethic. The people they service do not count; they are more concerned over their own personal needs.
“I have had complaints of food going off, appliances giving up and children not being able to study for their end year exams. The mayor’s meeting in Northdale elicited more anger and frustration from residents, as they were not reassured of a definite way forward and it lacked confidence in the team that we as residents and businesses rely on to service the city’s needs,” said Naidoo.
She added that a lot of the problems would be solved if there was movement to start ‘special rating areas’.
CEO of the Pietermaritzburg Midlands Chamber of Business (PMCB), Melanie Veness, said that the outages are disastrous for business recovery post COVID19.
“They are making it virtually impossible for businesses to recover post-covid financial losses. How do you trade your way back into the black with constant outages? We’re definitely going to lose businesses unless we act immediately. People are going to lose jobs because of this, no doubt about it. We need a complete audit of our electricity network and the government needs to work with us to urgently start fixing this infrastructure,” said Veness.