Electricity outages cause havoc for Glen Anil businesses

WIDESPREAD electricity outages have left businesses and residents in the Glen Anil area without electricity for close to 100 hours in the last month.

Aside from dealing with scheduled blackouts, which have become routine in the last year for many citizens, business owners say old infrastructure and patch-job repairs are leaving them vulnerable to long hours without electricity.

David Moran, owner of Eat Greek Foods, operates out of the Victoria Park business park, and said the current trajectory of electricity outages is not sustainable and is putting businesses at risk of closing.

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“As business owners, we feel dejected and almost hopeless. Most of us are considering either relocation or closure. I put in an industrial generator last year for my business to cope with the higher stages of load-shedding, and in 10 months, we used the generator for 98 hours. From February 28 of this year, we have had 100 hours without electricity. Bear in mind, only eight of those hours were scheduled load-shedding. We have had periods where we’ve gone between 36 and 72 hours without any electricity. It is crippling as a lot of what we do is cold storage, which is essential from a food-safety perspective.

“We also supply hotels and restaurants, and we are terrified every time we lose power because there is no telling how long it will be before we are reconnected. We’ve recently formed a WhatsApp group for businesses in the Glen Anil area affected by this, and we are trying to secure a meeting with the eThekwini Municipality’s electricity department to find out what the plan is going forward. We feel the whole area needs to be upgraded as old infrastructure and lack of maintenance is causing absolute havoc,” he said.

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