Posted By Own Staff Wednesday, 20 January 2010 07:51

Business people have called for the setting up of alternative forms of service provision stating that monopolies in service provision have had detrimental effects in the production process and in the running of their businesses. 

Mr Sidney Makazhe a business person commenting on the high charges from the country’s service providers said that the alternative for businesses persons and the community would be the development of alternative forms of service provision.

“The problem we have as a country is that we just have one telecommunications provider which is one of the reasons why we are facing such problems,” Mr Makazhe said.

He said if the country can have several service providers the challenges that the business community is facing at the moment could be reduced or be obliterated.

“We need to have many entities in the country that will provide service. The reason for the high tarrifs that we have at the moment is because the country has oligopolies managing the water, electricity and telecommunications. If there are several service providers the competition would force service providers to charge realistic prices,” he said.

The high cost of service charges has sparked an outcry from business people in Bulawayo who have complained that the high tariffs have also had detrimental effects in their attempts to revamp their businesses.

Small and medium scale enterprises said they felt that they were the most affected as they were expected to pay almost the same amounts of rentals as big businesses.

“We fork out large sums of money to keep our businesses afloat as we have no choice but to pay the rentals,” said a hair salon owner Pretty Phiri.

She said as a salon owner she could not afford to have her water or electricity cut as these were major inputs in her business.

“If there is no water in the salon clients will not be able to wash their hair washed and if there is no electricity then it means that our clients will find alternative salons to get their hair done,” she said.

Phiri said that many business people were hoping that 2010 will be a different year in terms of tariffs with many urging the Ministry of Trade and Commerce to engage service providers so that they can reduce tariffs.

“We not only have the high cost of the tariffs from the bills that we acquire each month but we also incurred bills from 2008 when all service providers started charging for services in foreign currency. We feel that they started charging exorbitantly so that they could recoup the losses they made when charges were still in Zimbabwean dollars,” Phiri said.

Business people said that the high bills charged have had an adverse effect on production costs.

“The bills from service providers such as Tel one, ZESA and the BCC are obviously very high and they have affected our operations in a major way,” said Makazhe.

He said that the country needs to bring major changes in the provision of service industry as it was causing the cost of production to be very high. He noted that this led to expensive products being produced in Zimbabwe and hence its inability to compete with products from the region.