Johannesburg business owners say their narrow profits are being severely impacted by Eskom’s stage four loadshedding which has gripped the entire country.
Stage four was instituted after power imports from Mozambique were interrupted because of Cyclone Idai.
The power outages have also caused traffic misery in some parts of the City of Gold – with traffic lights out.
Residents have to find power alternatives amid the severe loadshedding.
Business owners say they lose thousands of rand during the outage as there is no income.
“It’s affecting us in every way because all the ATM’s are all off also and the customers can’t draw money and can’t come into the store to buy or we lose the whole day sales, people don’t come in at all.”
“I have to find alternatives to boil my water with something else. My meat, your frozen everything you buy limited one so loadshedding is affecting me a lot and is costly too much.”
Due to the loss of an additional 900 MW from the Mozambique imports, loadshedding will move up to stage 4 from 12 noon: Eskom pic.twitter.com/1O431h6ZKT
— SABC News Online (@SABCNewsOnline) March 16, 2019
Eskom, which generates nearly all of the power for Africa’s most industrialised economy, said that it had cut 4 000 megawatts, double the 2 000 MW it had said would be cut over the weekend after repeated faults at its coal-fired power stations.
The situation worsened on Saturday after a fall in electricity exports from Mozambique, which is cleaning up after a powerful cyclone knocked out communications and electricity pylons on Thursday.
