By IKOME CHRISTIE-NOELLA EPOSI
Inhabitants of Buea, South west region of Cameroon have for over a week suffered from constant electricity seizure, a situation which has left many wandering as to what the problem might be with Cameroon’s power supplier, Eneo.
The bizarre situation which commenced on Sunday, March 8, 2020 has till the time of this report not been normalised and the people of Buea find it very difficult to carry on with their daily activities especially as everything about them revolves around electricity.
According to Akwo Austin a poultry farmer in Buea, “The recent power fluctuation in Buea has negatively affected me as a poultry farmer. This is as a result of the fact that the chicks need constant warmth for their wellbeing and maturity and this is done with the use of connecting 100 watts bulbs all over the poultry farm to supply enough heat and warmth to my little chicks. Also I need electricity to hatch the eggs collected from the poultry. All these have been very difficult for the past days due to power fluctuations” he explained.
Talking to an inhabitant at Campaign Street 7, Ebot Carine, she expressed discontentment with the issue of light seizure: “All my foodstuffs in the fridge have gotten bad because of no lights. I don’t have water too because our building uses bole hole which functions only with electricity. This problem of power seizure for the past days has caused enough harm already. The earlier ENEO does something fast about this, the better” she said.
Another business person, Didier Ebi based in Molyko says the issue of power failure has put his business on a standstill. “I’m into electronics; I do laptop repairs and maintenance. How am I supposed to repair or maintain someone’s laptop when there is no electricity to test the machine?” he questioned.
Also, El Bashir Zamani of Trinity Ventures International in Molyko explains that “I am into documentation services (Printing, scanning, CD burning, book binding, photocopy, printing etc. Ever since the start of this constant power seizure in town, business has been extremely slow for me as I am unable to use my machine to work. People come to me to photocopy their documents and do their photo enlargements and I can’t due to light failure. It is my greatest hope that everything returns to normalcy as soon as possible.”
Eneo Cameroon has through its social media outlets released communiqués stating the raison-d’etre of the power failure. In one of its recent communiqués on March 11, 2020, the company states that the power failure is as a result of an incident which occurred on the transformer of the Limbe mile II substation on Sunday, March 8, 2020. “SONATREL’s teams are currently working hard to get the situation back to normal as soon as possible. The absence of this transmission facility has increased the constraints on the distribution network, thereby obliging Eneo to ration the electricity supply, in order to keep the system balanced. Once the repair works being carried out by SONATREL are finished, Eneo will get back to supplying all of its impacted customers as was the case before this incident” reads the communiqué.
Despite the many communiqués, it is but clear that what the people of Buea in particular and Fako and Meme divisions in general want is for the issue of electricity to once and for all be normalised so they can pull through with their daily activities as usual.