Which businesses will not survive the power crisis?

Sandy Grant | Friday March 7, 2014 16:55

Now for the third time in less than three months the same crooks have returned to their favourite spot where they know that no one will ever contest their right to take anything that the BTC provides them. In the latest instance, the BTC staff members – no not its public relations officer  whom noone seems to remember as ever having said anything about anything - explains that this time around the crooks have stolen underground cable which will take longer to replace. Oh dear. How many weeks will we have to pay for a service that the BTC is unable to provide? And when the cable is eventually replaced, why would the crooks wait longer than a week or so before removing it once again? And the BTC intends to privatise! 

I have previously suggested that a concerned MP should ask the Minister to detail the losses the BTC has experienced due to theft in the last, say, two years.  The information requested should include a list of the places where cable theft has most frequently occurred, the estimated value of the materials that have been stolen and an explanation as to why the BTC has been so pathetically incapable of protecting its property and ensuring its suffering customers an uninterrupted service.  Anyway, with no phone, no internet and no email service available at home, it was off to the big city to find an internet café which, in the meanwhile, would have to do. Joke. The first stop proved to be a zero – the internet service there had apparently been cut off - but no big deal, Gaborone is replete with internet cafes so it was only a matter of doing the rounds until we found one in good working order. Ha. A second joke.  Huge swathes of the great city were without power and where there was power, there was no internet connection!  Evidently those attempting to run such cafes as viable businesses must be in big trouble. But moving from one power dead area to another really did bring it home to me how all the smaller power dependent businesses are being wrecked by the continuing power crisis. 

Previously my awareness of this crisis in Gaborone has been limited to its traffic lights which do allow traffic to pass even when they are not working. But whereas hotels, hospitals and major supermarkets and printers will all by now have their own generators and can continue functioning, small businesses, bakeries, supermarkets selling fresh food, hairdressers, internet cafes, newspapers and butcheries cannot function and must be suffering catastrophic losses.  It surprises me not only that any have contrived to survive but that no move has yet been made by a representative body such as BOCCIM to sue the government, the Ministry responsible, and/or the BPC for failing to deliver the service which it was contracted to do – with ruinous results for those so unhappily dependent on it.  From a distance, BOCCIM, however, does seem to be a very accommodating sort of organisation and one which is unlikely to take up such causes. But this is Botswana, of course and not the USA where, rightly or wrongly, the small-scale businessman, with or without backing, would have been in court long ago.  But with so much establishment cash readily available to help those venturing into business, it surprises me that there appears to be no evidence of establishment concern for key businesses which still precariously exist – such as bakeries.  What will the government do when they decide that they are involved in a battle that they cannot possibly win – and are therefore all closing down.  No bread for the foreseeable future - so start wondering why no one had earlier realised that the extent of  the problem and the need to work out how bakeries could best be helped. It also surprises me that no newspaper, as far as I know, has made it its business to investigate the effect that the power crisis has had on the community, on its major institutions, private and public, and on its varied businesses. How is it that even now we can have no idea how society as a whole has reacted to this crisis, what measures it has taken to ameliorate the problem, and in what areas of need it has simply been unable to cope? In addition, it would seem obvious that someone in the National Assembly should ask the relevant Minister to provide an estimate of the loss the country has experienced during the last 18 months as a direct result of continuing power cuts.

*Sandy Grant is a columnist in The Monitor