The interruptions caused by load shedding will have a
negative impact on the costs small businesses in various sectors have to carry.
ZESA has reintroduced load shedding for the first time since 2015. The power utility has pinned this to Zambezi River Authority (ZRA) who cut the water allocation for electricity generation by 5.3 percent from 38 billion cubic metres to 36 billion cubic metres.
Businesses in Harare have spent the past days struggling to
operate amid rolling blackouts that affect their operations for as many as five
hours at a time.
I have absolutely no doubt that President Mnangagwa wants to turn the country around and we must support his efforts in doing so. Not necessarily by means of wearing the EDscarf , but as everyday citizens trying to help wherever we can to keep positive, focused and push for service delivery and accountability.
Load shedding is very expensive, not only to ZESA, because
they cannot sell as much electricity as we want to, but also for the country.
Techunzipped visited some businesses in Highfields during
blackouts to see how they were coping with the situation.
“People don’t get the things they want and they walk out,”
Mary Muchemwa said. With fridges shut down, cakes, mousses and trays of
tiramisu “are going off. It’s all stuff that costs money to make,” she said.
With petrol prices close to record levels, running the generator
is expensive and doesn’t provide nearly enough energy to keep all the lights
on, fridges cold and meat band saws working all at once.
