Owners of funeral parlours say they are struggling to keep their businesses afloat as the country’s energy crisis deepens.
They say they are battling to keep bodies from decaying.
To ensure the preservation of human remains, cold storage facilities need to be kept at temperatures of below minus five degrees Celsius.
As Eskom’s rolling blackouts continue, this is becoming extremely difficult and expensive for owners of funeral parlours.
National Funeral Practitioners’ Association of South Africa spokesperson, Dududu Magano says, “Nobody is coming with a solution on how this can be solved. Eskom cannot assist us. Government does not have a solution and it has not looked at ways of how they can assist, particularly the ones with mortuaries, to be able to deal with these costs. They [costs] are rising constantly,” adds Magano.
Meanwhile, the poultry industry says rolling blackouts have seen serious supply chain disruptions.
It says farmers have already lost over 10 million chickens because they couldn’t be delivered, as buyers have no electricity to continue normal operations.
The industry says power cuts pose a serious threat to the supply of chicken to restaurants and fast food outlets.
