Frequent power cuts, a cause of poor business activities

DAR ES SALAAM city and its suburbs is currently faced by erratic power supply, and for that matter people’s business enterprises and office services in general have been slowing down. The long standing situation has remained a bigger problem to users. Offices which operates in mostly affected areas by power blues, have to halt their works to a considerable length of time until the electricity power comes back. This situation causes congestion of office work load which are mostly done in computers. Some big organizations, companies and some other individual business enterprises resort to the use of mostly diesel machine generators or to solar energies for power supply in order to keep on going their business activities. Due to the prevailing situation, charges for internet surfing and secretarial services have increased considerably. Sofia James, an attendant of Richmond Internet café centre located at Mnazi Mmoja near Gerezani area says that, they are sometimes ought to increase charges for surfing to their customers when connected to a machine generator for power supply during power blackouts. She says that, due to high expenses they incur to run a machine generator for power generation emanating from the cost of oil, charges for surfing which normally stands at Tsh. 1,000 increases by 50 percent to Tsh. 1.500 per one hour. But when there is normal power connection from the national grid, the prices remains the same. Ezekiel Mwinda, a resident of Yombo-Vituka suburb in Ilala district, Dar es Salaam Region, is among the many small traders in the area whose business is adversely affected due to power interruption in the area. Mwinda runs an internet café business in a house he had hired, told Business Times in an exclusive interview that his business is often inconvenienced by frequent power cuts in the area an aspect that results into low profit levels at the end of the day. Office workers are also worried on the compelling problems which include poor telephone services in fixed lines, and on top of this is bandwidth allocation that users sometimes call the service givers as the unseen saboteurs, says an attendant of the TTCL company’s customer care along Samora Avenue whose company’s fixed telephones remains unworkable during power blackouts. But it’s very sad to note that, the continued power interruption in most parts of the country especially in the city of Dar es Salaam, has been causing fear among workers thus lowering their efficiency to some extent at their respective working places.
Coupled with the normal humanitarian demands, in some rural areas people might surge forward their queries in desperation to blame for their government for failure to restore an effective infrastructure, and resort to other reliable alternative power source supply to eradicate the impending phenomenon. A typical case study of the situation happened recently in Kipunguni ‘B’ at Ukonga ward in Ilala district, Dar es Salaam region when a group of people had gathered in a sizeable hall watching a live television broadcast show when suddenly power went off. This was when a National soccer team, the so-called “Taifa Stars” was playing football match against the national Senegalese soccer team in the inaugural Championship of the African Nations (CHAN) finals in Abidjan, Ivory Coast on Sunday night. A live television broadcast was being transmitted from Abidjan through National Television channel (TBC).
Distraught and anger reigned among them as the situation had suddenly disrupted a luxurious moment they had at that time when they had only enjoyed a twenty minute live broadcast of the first session before half-time. Immediately when power went off there were some sort of murmuring among themselves that accompanied by complaints and without knowing exactly who to blame at that moment for the cause of suspending their live show which they had been enjoying viewing. A lot was attributed to such shadow experience by users, and there were so many sayings emanating from people’s minds reflected basically on carelessness and or laziness to a National Power Utility Firm ‘TANESCO’ and its entire organization for failure.
“Lack of electricity is a common thorn in the flesh of ICT stakeholders and operators in general”, says Reuben Daniel an ICT consultant based in Dar es Salaam city. According to him, unreliable electricity supply coupled with frequent power interruption still remains the biggest obstacle for the development of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and rural communities are mostly hit regions in Tanzania. According to him, an effective supply of electricity provides better business solution other than depending alternatively on power generation which he says is too expensive to accommodate ICT business operation. Most people in the city are always amused by the announcements in newspapers highlighting power interruption to specific areas within the city issued by the communication office at the headquarter of the National Power Utility firm (TANESCO). However, TANESCO used to apologize to its esteemed customers by issuing prior notices for any inconveniences happened to occur wherever maintenance work has to be done by the firms’ technical workers somewhere in the city incase of emergency on its main transmission line. Erratic electricity supply which has become a growing concern in most parts of the country is a major contributing factor which hampers the development of the ICTs, in general.