SMALL and Medium Enterprises Development Minister Elias Mubanga says government has directed CEEC to quickly facilitate a solar loan scheme to SMEs, especially salon and barbershop owners, in view of current power outages. In an interview, Monday, Mubanga acknowledged that load-shedding had negatively impacted small businesses. “The load shedding has actually affected our small businesses, especially the salon owners and the barber shop owners. They have been affected because of this eight hour load-shedding but basically what we are doing as government [is that] we really want to encourage them to go into green energy; to get into some solar system. We do have a loan component within our institution, the Citizen Economic Empowerment Commission, [so] we have directed them...