Power cuts

By: JO-MARÉ DUDDY

BUSINESSES in Kalkrand and Maltahöhe, all using pre-paid electricity, ground to a halt yesterday, as NamPower wiped them off the national grid because the village councils refuse to pay their accounts.

Absolute chaos, is how business owners in both towns described their predicament. Those who have generators juggled their service delivery, while others simply shut their doors.

Kalkrand Service Station owner Rudi Hansen rushed to Windhoek to buy another generator as the town entered its second day without power. His wife, Estelle, told The Namibian that their existing generators couldn’t handle pumping fuel and running the deep freezers at their shop. They had to stop baking bread altogether, leaving Kalkrand without fresh bread.

The couple spend between N$10 000 and N$12 000 every month buying pre-paid electricity.

Village Council Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Neville Smith said he was desperately trying to get an appointment with NamPower in Windhoek to try and strike a deal on the council’s remaining arrears of N$233 000. Over the past weeks, Smith has already paid off N$103 000.

However, now the coffers are empty, he said. Kalkrand can pay another N$35 000, but that’s it, he said.

“There isn’t money for anything else,” Smith said.

He said the state clinic in the town had to throw some medicine away as it does not have a generator to keep its fridges going. The Police was also cut off, as was the Village Council itself.

“Everything is standing still,” Smith said.

He was also concerned about the town’s sewerage system which stopped pumping. The sewerage tanks were probably already running over, he said yesterday afternoon.

Smith said the council fell behind on its NamPower account because something was wrong with its system.

“We buy power, but I don’t know where it is going. It simply disappears,” he said.

A NamPower engineer was in Kalkrand yesterday morning to investigate the matter, Smith said. However, he couldn’t work as the power was cut off.

The business community at Maltahöhe was ‘hot under the collar’ – literally and figuratively – as they struggled to do business without air conditioners in 33 degrees.

The fact that the Village Council couldn’t pay its arrears, rumoured to be around N$300 000, didn’t surprise businesswoman Hendricka Koen. A Village Council cheque of N$91 that she recently cashed for a worker’s overtime, bounced.

Koen had to close her take-away yesterday afternoon. When The Namibian spoke to her, she was struggling to keep her other business, ‘Loer-In Bottelstoor’, running. It was difficult though, as her computers were down and she couldn’t print a price list of her stock.

Her pre-paid electricity metres were filled with N$2 000 worth of power.

Also fuming was Johan Niemand, owner of the Total Service Station. His generator kept his fuel pumps running, but at the expense of other services, like the ATM machine.

“The ATM machine is our money spinner. People come here to draw money and to buy fuel and stuff in our shop,” he said.

The black-out is embarrassing, especially with tourists around, Geraldine Fourie of Tinkie Agency, Maltahöhe’s butchery, said. Her husband was struggling with their generators to ensure that their full deep-freezers didn’t run down. Should that happen, it would be at a “hell of a cost”, Fourie said.

Apparently NamPower wants N$185 000 before it will reconnect Maltahöhe. The figure couldn’t be confirmed, as the Village Council at Maltahöhe didn’t answer its phones yesterday afternoon.

According to businesspeople at Witvlei, the village’s power was cut off for about two hours yesterday morning, before it was switched back on. Village Council CEO Magdalena Oais wasn’t available for comment.

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