Eskom’s inability to supply uninterrupted electricity continues to cause devastation to households and businesses with many enterprises downsizing and or closing down completely.
Poultry farmers are among the hardest hit by the rolling power outages as they need electricity not just for their chicks to grow but for merely keeping them alive as well.
A North West poultry farmer is among those affected by the power outages and has already lost chicken, money and had to lay off some employees too.
32-year-old Bayanda Maseko who runs a poultry farm in Bronkhorspruit outside Rustenburg, North West, says his business is hanging by the thread after suffering sustained losses as a result of load shedding.
“The day I put 2 000 chicken boilers, they started implementing load shedding. On the very same day we had loadshedding and because of low or lack of maintenance of Eskom’s infrastructure in terms of their lines in our area, I lost over 4 000 chickens,” said Maseko.
Maseko said on the day he suffered losses, there was no electricity for almost three days. This was a time when the chickens were at a very tender age, and their temperature needed to be kept at around 30 degrees, where they needed to be warm enough, needed water, medication that needed to be administered through the water.
“For two-and-a-half days, I didn’t have electricity and I tried to use the water and even asked neighbors for assistance. We just sat and looked at our chickens while they were suffocating from dehydration, because they were a day old.
“”We had another batch that was a bit grown, but most of it died as well. So we lost a lot, approximately R160 000 in terms of monetary loss, and we are still losing.
“It is very difficult to set up an alternative when you have not planned or budgeted for it. Especially us, as growing farmers, we are young, our businesses are young and we are trying to get by, to build this business with the continuous load shedding that is very difficult.
“With employees as well, I’ve lost two employees that couldn’t be with us any more, number one because of the loadshedding. of course on the farm when there’s loadshedding, there’s no water because we pump water using electricity-generated power, so with the loss we had with chickens we couldn’t pay salaries in time.
“Number two people are working, they have to have tea time, lunch, they have to cook their supper cause they are on site. They stay in the farm and they have to use the bathroom and bath so their livelihoods were not a comfortable space to be in.
“When you are in the farm, you are in the middle of nowhere, you don’t have electricity, you don’t have water, you can’t cook, so they couldn’t be patient enough to wait for us to try and find an alternative,” said Maseko.
“Load shedding has really hit us hard and creates set backs in terms of business. I have been farming on the premises for almost ten years now. It’s been a long difficult ten years and now that we are trying to grow, you know from experience and invest more into the business, load shedding hit us hard.
“Load shedding is greater than any other pandemic that could ever hit this country. We are coming from a pandemic, which is Covid-19, trust me- Covid-19 is nothing compared to what loadshedding is doing to our businesses and our livelihoods.
Despite his challenges, Maseko is determined and said he hoped things would come around although it seems like they are on their own because they keep on losing.
