SMEs Urged to Adopt Alternative Energy

Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Minister Sithembiso Nyoni recently urged small businesses to invest in alternative energy sources in light of ongoing power cuts experienced in the country.

She said incessant power cuts being experienced were affecting small to medium businesses particularly badly, as a lot of them could not afford stop-gap alternatives like generators.

Nyoni said this when she announced the inaugural members of the micro, small and medium enterprises advisory council, who are tasked with tackling challenges faced by small informal businesses.

“As a Ministry, we are very concerned because we are getting a lot of reports from the SMEs who are now affected very badly by the power cuts.

All we can say is that we continue to support and be in dialogue with the Ministry of Energy,” she said. “We also want to urge the SMES to look at green energy. I know initially it could be expensive but I think that eventually it is the way to go to make sure that we have solar panels that could drive some of our machines. I know generators are expensive but I just want the SMEs to know that the Ministry is very concerned about the situation in which they find themselves,” she said.

Nyoni said finding solutions to the energy crisis would be one of the immediate tasks of the newly advisory council.

“This is one of the tasks that I am going to give to this council to look into alternative energy that could be one of the things that they start with. How can we then help them drive alternative energy that could then assist the SMEs,” she asked.

Chairman of the SMEs advisory council, Moses Magura implored businesses to quickly adopt green energy sources to augment ongoing electricity challenges.

“We as SMEs are equally affected. The only way is to engage with the Ministry of Energy so that we can find a lasting solution and at the same time encourage business people and SMEs to look for alternative sources of power such as green power,” he said.

“We are going to encourage our SMEs to go that route.”