Small business owners consider closing up shop due to blackouts

Small business owners are considering closing their doors as their profits halved with the persistent power cuts and load shedding.

Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said load shedding would remain at stage 4 until diesel stocks have been replenished.

“Stage 4 load shedding will continue to be implemented until 5am on Saturday morning and reduce to stage 3 throughout the weekend,” he said.

ALSO READ: Load shedding to be reduced to stage 3 over the weekend

Co-owner of the Boomhuisie restaurant, Marinda Toerien, said despite having a generator, load shedding affected the water.

“It’s getting worse daily. The water pressure is also constantly low due to load shedding.”

Toerien said some households haven’t had water for more than four weeks. She said she noticed a shift in
the market.

“It’s like they don’t want to sit and wait for food anymore. They want to order and take it home,” she said, adding they were too scared to leave their houses during load shedding.

Salon owner DJ Rothman said they got load shedding up to three times a day. “It starts as early as
8am and again around lunchtime. I cannot explain how many walkin clients we can’t help due to the load shedding,” he said.

Rothman said he lost about R300 per client he could not help. “If we had an average of four clients a day, you make the sums on our loss,” he said.

Dalien Jonker has owned a laundry and housekeeping service that cleans a guest house in Eastern Cape.

“The power cuts didn’t stop the guests from checking in and out, which meant we needed to clean the linen daily. It’s a nightmare,” she said.

She said it felt like she paid her workers to stare at her for four hours while they waited for the power to return.

“I can’t send them home and expect them to return when the power returns because transport is expensive.”

Jonker said it was challenging to clean the rooms between when people checked out at 10am and 2pm when the new guests checked in.

“It gave us four hours to clean. When the power is off, we can’t clean or vacuum. Where it usually took us three hours to clean, it now took six hours to catch up with all the load shedding,” she said.

When the power was off, Jonker had seven washing machines and five dryers out of order while they waited for the power to return.

“Each machine costs R300 to run for an hour so I lose a lot of money at the laundry,” she said.

Jonker said a generator was out of the question because she worked on three-phase power line. She got a quote to run one machine and one iron that would cost R5 000 per month.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t afford that. It’s only one machine and one iron, what about the dryers,” she said.

“Where I made an average of R48 000 turnover a month it has decreased to R24 000. My profit has halved due to load shedding.”

Jonker said she was considering closing the business after 14 years.

DA spokesperson on finance in Gauteng Patrick Atkinson said people will be forced to join the 2 515 000 Gauteng residents already in the unemployment lines if more small businesses closed.

“The recent rounds of stage 5 and stage 6 load shedding has meant power outages of up to eight hours per day. This is particularly serious for small businesses, which are seeing revenues reduced by between
a third and a half of what they normally turnover,” he said.

He said if load shedding persisted, many more small businesses will be forced to close up shop.

– marizkac@citizen.co.za

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