Informal traders struggle to keep up
SMALL and informal businesses were among the worst hit by Eskom’s recent implementation of load shedding.
Many of them were uncertain of what would become of their livelihoods if alternate energy suppliers were not found soon.
Business owner Nomusa Nxasana, 38, who runs her business Fashion Factory in Umlazi and employs 12 people, said her work was impossible to do without electricity.
Nxasana said that it was a struggle to cut through fabric and to construct dresses as these required the use of machines.
“I work on targets per hour, like any other factory. My target is six dresses per hour.
“Normally the lights are off for two hours daily, of which I lose 12 dresses of production daily,” she said.
Nxasana said she had to ask staff to work night shifts and had to buy additional sewing machines to get her production line going, when the supply of electricity was more stable.
She said that the employees were often exhausted due to the imbalanced shifts and she had cancelled their weekend shifts so they could rest.
Nxasana said she was unable to afford a generator because it was too expensive and hoped that load shedding would soon be a thing of the past.
Baker and business owner, Ntokozo Magwaza, 31, runs the Madam Harvest Bakery at the Early Morning Market in Durban’s Central Business District.
She said her business relies on the availability of electricity to function and its absence slows down the rate of production, which leads to a loss of customers and essentially the profits.
Magwaza said that it had also forced her, and her 10 employees to operate the business, outside of their normal hours of 8am to 6pm.
“I have no choice but to hope for the best everyday, and work between different hours with my team in order to meet our targets as we do not have a generator and my landlord does not allow the use of a gas stove,” she said.
Magwaza who specialises in scones, muffins and cakes for events said that the ideal situation would be one where electricity was consistently available so that her business would flourish.
Tinny Phungula, 35, owner of Deka Lifestyle, a fast food outlet in Inanda, said she was at her wits end.
“Load shedding is a small business’ worst nightmare. I’m losing a lot of stock, it gets rotten and I cannot sell it to my customers and that makes it hard to restock. I am also losing customers because the load-shedding schedule for our area is always at my business’s peak hours, which is 8am-10am, 12pm-2pm and 4-6pm.
“These are the times (that) I'm most busy and if there's no electricity (it) means I cannot work since my business needs electricity to function,” she said.
Phungula said the increasing levels of load shedding has also affected her business’s cash flow and she has since had to let go two of her staff.
“This greatly affects my total cash up for the day, thus affecting our monthly turnover. It’s becoming hard to pay staff salaries because of the financial constraints the business is facing due to load shedding,” she said.
“My appeal to Minister of Energy Gwede Mantashe is to urgently intervene in this regard by assisting (and) removing load shedding completely because our business might close down if this is how things are going to be for the rest of the year,” said Phungula.
Denzil Moonsamy, 52, who runs Motorsport Auto, a panel-beating company in Phoenix, said he was losing customers because of load shedding.
Moonsamy has been running his business for about 15 years.
“Work is backlogged as most of our machinery operates with electricity. If there’s load shedding, it means everything stops. We can’t fix cars and we can only continue when electricity is back,” he said.
He said time was wasted and customers often got frustrated.
“Most customers don’t understand that they have to wait longer because of the impact of load shedding.
“We don’t have money to at least buy a generator because that’s costly on its own too,” said Moonsamy.
He employs three people but has had to cut their working hours because they were unable to work during load shedding.