Swakop grinds to a halt

BUSINESSES at Swakopmund experienced a blue Monday yesterday, with a power outage crippling shops from 07h30 to 15h30.

The outage forced supermarkets, fast-food outlets, butcheries, banks and even hotels to close their doors and shut up shop for the day. Several business people said the day’s loss of business, at the start of the busy holiday season, was a major blow to them.Some of the major supermarkets, such as Shoprite, closed their doors after receiving indications that there would be no electricity for the rest of the day.Some of the more popular food franchises, such as KFC and Spur, could not cook without electricity, while butcheries were unable to cut and weigh meat.Only those restaurants cooking with gas could continue service.FNB closed its doors for the day, while the other banks were only able to take deposits and do certain transactions manually.No money could be withdrawn – and ATMs were out of order too.Even some of the hotels were battling to keep going without their computerised booking systems.John Kaimu of NamPower told The Namibian that a conductor at one of the NamPower substations near Swakopmund, the 66kV Walmund Substation, was broken.He said the outage had nothing to do with a national shortage of electricity.Yesterday’s blackout at Swakopmund also had nothing to do with the national outage on Sunday, which was caused by heavy thunderstorms in South Africa, he said.Several business people said the day’s loss of business, at the start of the busy holiday season, was a major blow to them.Some of the major supermarkets, such as Shoprite, closed their doors after receiving indications that there would be no electricity for the rest of the day. Some of the more popular food franchises, such as KFC and Spur, could not cook without electricity, while butcheries were unable to cut and weigh meat.Only those restaurants cooking with gas could continue service.FNB closed its doors for the day, while the other banks were only able to take deposits and do certain transactions manually.No money could be withdrawn – and ATMs were out of order too.Even some of the hotels were battling to keep going without their computerised booking systems.John Kaimu of NamPower told The Namibian that a conductor at one of the NamPower substations near Swakopmund, the 66kV Walmund Substation, was broken.He said the outage had nothing to do with a national shortage of electricity.Yesterday’s blackout at Swakopmund also had nothing to do with the national outage on Sunday, which was caused by heavy thunderstorms in South Africa, he said.