Bamenda: low voltage crippling businesses

“For almost three weeks now, it has been on and off. The circuit breaker has been destroyed, the fridge is down, all the bulbs are off,” a father said looking assessing the loss incurred at his home at Foncha street due to persistent low voltage. He compalins that their quality of life is not the same as they have to rely on rechargeable solar lamps.

Just like in his home, several homes in Bamenda, chief town of the North West region have been witnessing low voltage. A lady at New layout downtown tells us, she now visits distant neighbours just so she can stay connected. “For about a month now, I have been charging my phone in other neighborhoods. In my house, the TV is bad, the distributors too because of the epileptic power supply,” an inhabitant of the area says.

Business persons at Up Station are decrying a drop in business as a result of this persistent poor power supply. “On normal days, I can work about 6,000-10,000frs per day but with low voltage, I can barely make 5,000frs,” a barber complains and adds that this is because of difficulties faced in charging equipment. “I very often use rechargeable machines to shave customers but with the present situation, I can only serve about 3-4 persons with my machines in one day.”

Not far from him, a lady working with a photocopying machine is using a generator to serve clients. “Machines cannot come on if I do not turn on the generator because the voltage is low. Some days, when light comes back normally, it is so high that if we are not careful, it might destroy the machines.”

In some neighbourhoods like Ngeng, the people say they have been without electricity for two weeks now and nothing is being done by workers of the electricity supply company.

Low voltage has been recurrent in Bamenda and the people are calling on Eneo officials to address the situation.