Zanzibari entrepreneurs withdrewmembership to Pride Tanzania‏

About 800 Zanzibar entrepreneurs have withdrawn from Pride Tanzania membership after their businesses performed poorly due to the ongoing power problems.
The majority of the entrepreneurs are fishermen, livestock keepers, vegetable farmers, small-scale juice producers, owners of butcheries, hair and beauty saloons.
Speaking in an interview recently, Pride Tanzania manager for Zanzibar branch Omar Juma Kimwaga said since power problems began, the majority of its customers ended their subscriptions, meaning that they no longer take credit facilities from the organization.
“63 per cent of them are women who have employed themselves by running small-scale businesses,” he said, adding that they attributed failure to continue with their subscription to Pride to poor business performance due to lack of electricity.
“We had 3,600 customers as of November, last year. But as of today, we have remained with only 2, 800,” said Kimwaga.
The manager also said that even their big subscribers who used to take big loans were now taking small loans as a result of generally poor performance of their businesses.
He said the majority of big customers who had been affected by power problems and opted to scale down the amount of loans they applied from Pride came from the fishing, livestock keeping and agriculture sectors, including those selling milk, butcheries and vegetable dealers.
“We are facing a very hard situation commercially, our customers, are not repaying back as they used to. Power problems are really costing us dearly,” he said.
He said however that it was just a short-term problem, calling for the