With its infrastructure dilapidated, technical breakdowns, difficulties in transporting fuel on roads in poor condition, the public electricity company, Jirama, has been struggling to meet the population’s energy needs and has also been facing colossal debts for years.
With our correspondent in Antananarivo, Laetitia Bezain
The return of rotating load shedding in the capital, Antananarivo, is exasperating the private sector. Power cuts also experienced by the other provinces of the island. In recent weeks, the resurgence of cuts lasting several hours a day in certain districts of the capital have caused distress for small and large businesses.
In the 67 ha district, customers of the Faniry fish market are becoming increasingly rare. Living to the rhythm of cuts and in the anguish of losing his goods, this is the daily life of this merchant. “ If there weren’t all these load shedding, our business would run better because people would be less suspicious of the quality of our products, explains Faniry. We could expand our business and order more fish. But at the moment we are very limited because we want to reduce our losses. »
Daily cuts which also impact the major industries and businesses on the island, with in particular the loss of products in the process of being manufactured.
“ When the electricity is cut in the middle of the production process, we have a lot of waste, regret explains Tiana Rasamimanana, president of the Syndicate of Industries of Madagascar. Moreover, when there are cuts in certain industries, the recovery requires a lot of hours at the machine level because there are preparations. There are machines that need to heat up. So these recoveries due to cuts cause us a lot of problems in terms of production capacity and machine efficiency. »
Communication of planned outages
Thousands of jobs are at stake in the textile, food and other basic necessities sectors.
” In some companies, which can afford to use generators, we are forced to use diesel, which multiplies by three or four the cost of producing our goods. All this causes enormous losses at the level of industrial societies. It is now difficult to be competitive because already the execrable state of the road leads to increases in transport prices. There now, add to that the cost of energy at the level of our production costs, the products of Madagascar become less and less competitive »; continues the President of the Syndicate of Industries.
The SIM has requested support measures from the government, among other things, the establishment of subsidies for the purchase of generators or fuel, but also a clear load shedding schedule to allow them to adapt to cuts.