Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Our first question is from Drew Chapel of Morgan Stanley, please go ahead.
Drew Chapel - Morgan Stanley
I guess, let me just start with the newest issue which is the power crisis and I think we follow why some of your service does not get disrupted and what issues or impact that the productivity have? And secondly, are you seeing any change in impact on some of your competitors in banks?
Serge Belamant
Yes, obviously the sudden implementation of load shedding which is really the same as load sharing considering we have to share what is there. Certainly, really created an environment that made it difficult people to operate, from the point of view that in terms of productivity in the office environment where people cannot work on APCs or you suddenly have no light or your service does not work or it takes you two hours to go to a next meeting rather than 20 minutes because the traffic lights are out. So there is absolutely no doubt that there have been a lot of disruptions for many businesses throughout South Africa because of the lack of power, obviously no involvement. We have aired always our disaster recovery plan in place and we have obviously activated some of those plans that have allowed all of our, let us call them, critical services to operate with immediate effect.
I do not believe in anybody thought that power disruptions were going to continue and in fact we did not know they are likely to continue for the foreseeable future so we have obviously activated our plan B, which means that within the next few weeks, we will be in the position that all of our services, critical or not we would be able to continue to operate with out any interruption.
But does not mean of course that other businesses are not affected, it does not mean that we can obviously provide power to traffic lights. So there is no doubt that it is affecting still the ability to perhaps communicate face to face with other people or other costumers. As far as we are concerned we are back on track and at this point in time, we do not really believe that the electricity unavailability is going to have any solid impact on our productivity in the next quarter.
There is no doubt that your point was valid that obviously when it comes to banks, when it comes to obviously technologies, which are really most dependent on electricity or networking because obviously people (inaudible) cellular phone networks, other communication networks were also affected by past failures and resulted in many different online system going down. There is no doubt that this is giving us a very big advantage by effect it includes categories in our government and can do it to other organizations that our system can continue to operate absolutely and completely as before regardless of any electricity failures.
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