Small firms pray Zuma has power fix

Eastern Cape business chambers have appealed to President Jacob Zuma to fix the country’s electricity crisis, which is crippling smaller businesses.

Zuma is scheduled to deliver his State of the Nation address (Sona) before parliament in Cape Town tonight.

OR Tambo chamber of business CEO Vuyisile Ntlabathi and Border-Kei Chamber of Business executive director Les Holbrook warned unless Zuma restored confidence, more businesses would close due to blackouts and more people would lose their jobs.

Ntlabathi said in the OR Tambo district many small businesses could not afford generators to keep their businesses going and still pay their workers every month.

“Hardest hit in our area are salons and retail stores. A clear plan to help this sector during these trying times is very important. And that has to come from the president,” said Ntlabathi.

Faisal Bashir, who runs a hardware and brickmaking plant in Mthatha, said he was “really battling”. “Without electricity, everything is stuck. That’s not good at all. We are losing customers.”

Staff also suffer as they lose out on wages when they were unable to produce bricks due to outages.

Bashir said he paid R18000 for a 6500-volt generator for his store, but could not afford the R140000 for a 40kV generator to power the brickmaker.

“Every day you must fill up with R200. It’s almost R7000 since December. Besides that, there is inconvenience to customers with computers and swiping machines not working.

“My one computer is damaged due to on and off electricity supply,” he said.

Holbrook said there needed to be an unequivocal statement from Zuma.

“Eskom is making excuses. There is too much passing the buck. Eskom is blaming government and government is blaming Eskom while the ANC blames apartheid,” said Holbrook.

“There needs to be an honest response to people as to what is going to happen. That issue has to be addressed otherwise single-handedly this electricity issue is going to cripple this country. The costs and impact are very immense. We need to get a clear picture of what is going on there .”

Commentators have said load-shedding is likely to impact on job creation in the future, as the lack of short-term solutions will spook investors.

Holbrook said: “Load-shedding will be affecting investments until there’s a clear policy on electricity. In the end that will impact on job creation.”

For the South African Council of Churches, the state of education in the Eastern Cape is of greater concern.

SACC CEO the Reverend Mpumelelo Qwabaza said there were unsafe school structures across the province.

As far back as 2002 former president Thabo Mbeki said no child should study “under a tree”.

In his 2004 Sona, Mbeki promised schools under trees would be wiped out by the end of that financial year.

Qwabaza said the situation on the ground suggested that such targets had not been met. He also raised concern about scholar transport.

The Daily Dispatch reported last week there were no funds to ferry 39000 Eastern Cape pupils to schools although they qualified for it.

“We expect the president to come up with solutions to these key education deliverables. These are key in improving the state of education system in our province,” said Qwabaza.

Holbrook said some of the deliverables could have been achieved were it not for rampant corruption.

“Service delivery remains a significant challenge. It’s getting worse, not better. How are they going to get municipalities to turn around their poor performance and improve delivery?”