Small business owners pay the price for ANC power failures
6 December 2018
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has been talking to small businesses in Jeppestown, Johannesburg on the impact of the ANC’s power failures.
DA Spokesperson on State Capture, Natasha Mazzone MP, and DA Deputy Provincial Chairperson and Member of the Economic Development Committee on the Johannesburg City Council, Councillor Bongani Nkomo, engaged with local business owners in the area, to understand the impact of Eskom’s power outages on South African entrepreneurs.
“We interacted with great South Africans, who took it upon themselves to start their own businesses in order to provide for their families. They are all suffering because load shedding has led to job shedding. The ANC’s power failures mean that they are losing their only source of income”, said Mazzone.
The DA discovered the true cost of Eskom’s ineptitude as it continues to fail in providing South African business owners, and the public at large, with access to electricity.
“Businesses depend on electricity each day to run their operations. Local entrepreneurs told us that they lose revenue for hours on end and that in some instances they lose thousands of rands in products which have gone bad. For many small businesses when power goes out, they are forced to close their doors”, said Mazzone.
This is the coalface of State Capture. Everyday South Africans are left to bear the brunt of the ANC and Guptas’ looting and mismanagement of Eskom.
Our citizens deserve to have power producers that are not characterised by the corruption which has rotted most of our state-owned entities, leaving them defunct and unable to deliver the services they are mandated to provide. We need an urgent diversification of power producers which will give power back to the people of South Africa.
The DA has already written to Minister Pravin Gordhan to meet with him and engage on our plan break up Eskom’s monopoly so that we can ensure that South Africans do not have to suffer the effects of load shedding again.
Issued by Natasha Mazzone, DA Spokesperson on State Capture, 6 December 2018
