Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry says load shedding is putting serious strain on businesses

Nigel Ward, president of the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry said prolonged periods of load shedding will affect South Africa’s economic growth prospects resulting in other risks and threats to businesses such as equipment damage and project delays which can have lasting medium and long-term implications.

Eskom implemented stage 4 loadshedding on Wednesday. File Picture: Karen Sandison African News Agency (ANA)

Published Mar 10, 2022

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Durban -The Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry says load shedding is putting a serious strain on businesses.

This follows Eskom’s announcement on Wednesday that the country would be moving to stage 4 load shedding until Friday at 5am. Thereafter it will move back to stage 2 load shedding until 5am on Monday.

Nigel Ward, president of the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said: “Load shedding is putting serious strain on the business community’s sustainability, it has resulted in loss of productivity, revenue and unplanned operational expenditure across industries and their value chains.”

Ward added that prolonged periods of load shedding will affect South Africa’s economic growth prospects, resulting in other risks and threats to businesses such as equipment damage and project delays which can have lasting medium and long-term implications for businesses.

“Small businesses feel the hard impact the most, they do not have adequate options and measures in place to withstand the impact of load shedding. Our SMMEs are the lifeblood of the South African economy, they simply cannot afford to source alternative energy solutions such as generators, inverters, or UPS (uninterruptible power supply) devices to mitigate the effects of load shedding,” he said.

Ward said that for most of the small businesses in both the formal and informal sectors, the two to four hour loss of productive time is crippling and places a significant negative financial burden on their businesses as they lose thousands of rands with each instance of load shedding.

He said businesses that could afford to, should explore alternative sources of energy to help ensure operations are uninterrupted.