The cost of running a business in Komani is rapidly rising due to the current dilapidated state of the electricity infrastructure, with one business having shed over five jobs just this year alone.
Another substation – without doors – caught fire during a rainy Wednesday, September 28 in the Komani CBD.
CCTV cameras at the corner of Green and Joubert streets captured the moment the substation exploded.
Service manager at Nissan and Hyundai Service Parts, Johann Grunewald, said the business is running a generator at around R1 035 a day.
“We are basically working to pay for fuel now. The cost of running a business in Komani is rising. We will try our best to keep our staff but we won’t be able to hire new staff in the current situation,” he said, appealing to the Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality (EMLM) to maintain the infrastructure.
Grunewald said the doors to the substation were stolen and had never been replaced.
This is not the first time a substation of the bankrupt municipality caught fire in. In May a 20MVA transformer caught alight.
The situation was even worse for Eyethu Funeral Services with administration clerk Likhaya Nolude agreeing the cost of running a business was rapidly rising.
The company keeps corpses within the premises and has to have a constant running electricity supply. Since the fire on Wednesday, when Komani-Karoo Express arrived, the parlour had spent R2 072 on 80 litres of diesel.
“We have fridges that must be on at all times. So our generators must be on day and night. We have had situations where we have had to come to the office at night to switch on the generators because the electricity had just gone off. So we always have someone on standby for such situations,” he said.
He said the EMLM had not been to the substation to assess the damage. Nolude said he would never open a business in Komani nor advise someone else to do so.
The Chris Hani District Municipality water tanker truck, he said, went to the substation but luckily Grunewald had extinguished the fire.
“We are always on our toes because we don’t know when we will have an outage. This is going to lead to job losses as we have had to retrench eight employees already this year,” Nolude said.
At the time of writing, EMLM spokesperson Lonwabo Kowa had not responded to written questions.
Media queries to Kowa on road and electricity dilapidation date as far back as June 14. None of which has been responded to, despite promise to do so.
