Palapye water crisis hits businesses hard
Lindiwe Mozola | Thursday March 16, 2017 15:20
Most of the businesses that suffered are those in the fast food industry particularly smaller restaurants that normally do not have emergency backup like bigger ones that include Debonairs Pizza, Steers and Chicken Licken among others.
Palapye started experiencing the crisis last Friday with the possibility of normalcy returning today.
According to a report by the Water Utilities Corporation (WUC), the plight was due to a North-South carrier pipeline burst on Friday.
The owner of Day Star restaurant, Pusoloso Tumahole said it has been a disaster for the past three days and production has been slow.
He said some of his customers were unhappy, as there was limited food to serve.
“My morning customers like to eat fat cakes and stew, but due to lack of water we did not meet their demand. Therefore some of our customers could not get their daily orders, which frustrated them,” he said.
Tumahole added that water problems in villages have been constant ever since WUC took over from the Department of Water Affairs.
He suggested that government should consider taking away the services from WUC or bring in a competitor.
Bosveld Butchery’s Hennieng Hittingh also shared the same sentiments as Tumahole that business has been slow.
He said he was forced to close for two hours in order to collect water from his plot located outside Palapye.
He said when one is in the food business, the environment should always be clean otherwise customers are be driven away.
“And this has been a challenge without water. I had to apply some urgent measures so that we can at least clean the premises,” the visibly worried Hittingh said.
A supervisor at Bimbo’s, Ogone Dikgopo also said that keeping the environment clean was the main problem, which is a factor that chases the customer away.
She said that other than that they have not been affected that much since most of their food is fried not cooked, therefore production was stable like any normal day.