Fatigue caused by loadshedding is a safety hazard

Anxiety, stress, strained family relationships and feelings of helplessness are some of the issues many people are currently struggling with. Having to produce the same amount of work despite having high stages of loadshedding cause stress and many people fear that continued loadshedding will lead to job losses and a derailed attempts to turn around the country’s struggling economy.

Apart from the economic impact, which is felt by the majority of businesses, South Africans are struggling to cope with the day-to-day effects of loadshedding with people reporting feeling an added sense of anxiety.

Many people are frustrated about the lack of control they have and the impact of loadshedding on their lives. Worrying about getting to work on time, traffic dangers when travelling, batteries charging enough for the next blackout. This also relates back to work where the same performance is expected but time is wasted in traffic jams, computer batteries not lasting, people being late for reasons out of their control. People’s moods are also negatively impacted due to high levels of frustration leading to more personal problems, conflict at home, work and on the roads.

Many peoples sleep is also impacted as there is an increase in crime when there are blackouts, alarm systems do not work as the batteries get damaged due to frequent blackouts and are costly to replace. People become hypervigilant and lie awake or are very restless and do not get quality sleep resulting in fatigue. This in turn affects their work, interpersonal relationships with family and colleagues, and will affect their concentration.

Fatigue is often thought of as the state of feeling very tired, weary or sleepy resulting from various sources such as insufficient sleep, prolonged mental or physical work, or extended periods of stress or anxiety.

Everyone should be concerned about the impact of fatigue as it can be considered a form of impairment, making fatigue a workplace hazard. However, fatigue levels are not easily measured or quantified; therefore, it is difficult to isolate the effect of fatigue on incident and injury rates.

Many studies focus on the amount of sleep required. Some research studies have shown that when workers have slept for less than 5 hours before work or when workers have been awake for more than 16 hours, their chance of making mistakes at work due to fatigue are significantly increased.