People living in Blantyre City have expressed concerns over persistence blackouts which have hit a lot of areas in the country saying it is affecting businesses.
According to some people we interviewed in the commercial city of the country blackouts are affecting many businesses in particular people who do small scale businesses but they depend on electricity and companies who manufacture products.
.
Khalid Zabula, who makes products from leather materials, said current blackouts which has affected almost every corner of the country has disturb his daily activities as he is not able to make some products because the machines he uses depends on electricity.
“These blackouts to be honest are affecting a lot of businesses, for example I produce leather products but as I am talking am falling to satisfy my customers because I do not meet the predicted time I set due to the blackouts since the machines I use requires electricity to work,” Zabula said.
Blackouts is also said to be a major contributing factor to over pricing on products saying people who manufacture or store them are using generators which is forcing them to raise price of their commodities.
For example, recently people have been appealing to ministry of trade to dialogue with companies who manufacture cement in the country about the prices they are setting which is different to what the ministry set.
And when asked some people working at companies producing cement openly said that it’s due to the persistent blackouts which are forcing them to raise their prices so that they make huge profits.
Since last year the country has been facing countless blackouts which Egenco has been attributing it to low levels of water in Shire River and also that for long time the energy sector has not been invested.
Recently Egenco introduced diesel generators to help in generating power to minimise the blackouts but nothing has changed.Power