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The Ndonga Linena Green Scheme farm manager, Jannor Rentel, fears that an electricity outage may affect the farm's current planting season's yield.

Rentel says the power outage at the green scheme has become prevalent.

Rentel noted that NORED needs to act urgently on the matter.

He says that for the past three months, they've experienced power outages for at least three consecutive days.

"If you get behind with watering your plants you will not have the yield you want , what else is happening now we are giving fertilizer to the fields then the pumps shutdown,  you are not giving the right amount anymore of fertilizer to the field because the pump is starting of starting of when the power is going on and off, so it impact with fertilizer but then also your infrastructure the pump station is an electronic device it can be damaged by this power outage,  even the pipes that pump is designed to shut down in a sequence slowdown shutdown then it stops but if it just shut down when the power is gone all this water that is pump in here runs back to the river and it hits a wall, they call it water hammer it damages the pipe."

Rentel says power outages also affect the communication network, making it difficult for them to seek help when needed.

"But this problem must be rectified before our maize gets to the stage where it needs a lot of water because if it's not going to rain this season, we need to pump 24 hours a day of water to give water to the plants. If you are one day behind without giving water, it will affect your maize. NORED should step in and fix the problem. There are a lot of things that they can do to fix the problem, like putting more isolation places in the line. Currently, the substation is just nearby, so we are the first on the line going to Mashare. Now, if a problem happens at Mashare, it kicks off the whole line, but if they had isolation places in the line, it just shuts it down to a certain point."

He says when called for help, NORED officials have to travel from Rundu or Divundu.

The farm, which is located 90 kilometres from Rundu, did not have electricity over the weekend.

The nbc has been trying to reach out to NORED for the past two weeks, but promises made by the company to provide answers never materialised.

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Author
Elizabeth Mwengo