By Trevor Makonyonga and
Kudakwashe Vhenge
Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) Holdings has cut off supply to Old Mutual Holdings over non-payment of over ZWL3,5 million to the power authority.
The power cuts have now gone for three days (Wednesday-Friday) and the affected buildings include Eastgate Shopping Mall, Batanai Gardens and Joina City (which has since been restored power.)
This publication has gathered that Old Mutual had by yesterday afternoon paid up ZWL 1,4 million and were expecting to have power restored by 9am today.
Efforts to get a comment from the Zimbabwe Electricity and Distribution Company (ZETDC) Public Relations Manager were fruitless as he was saying to be driving by the time of going to print
However, a survey by this publication at Eastgate Shopping Mall as well as Batanai Gardens established an array of complains by tenants who were complaining of incurring losses and some had closed up because of bad business.
Business operators who operate food outlets, electric gadgets and clothing items lamented about massive loss of revenue at a time they were expecting to make money.
“We operate a canteen and we have incurred loses as some of our perishables (vegetables and meat) got rotten as a result of these power cuts. We should be making money this festive season but instead we are experiencing loses as we have to transport our refrigerators to other outlets so as to store our perishables,” said one Muguti who is into restaurant business.
Darkness characterized the interior of many shops that had opted for other alternative source of lighting which proved not to be very effective.
“We are being forced to close early this festive season as a result of poor lighting. We have gone out of our way to buy these lights which you can see are not doing justice as all those corners are not visible to our potential customers,” lamented one Susan who operated a clothing outlet at Joina City.
ZESA is reported to be owed $1billion in unpaid power billsfrom various cooperates, farms and households which have seen it implementing a credit control measure in an effort to recover its loss.
