The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the operations of Megafest Holdings, the organisers of the Megafest Business Awards. This was disclosed by the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr Tafadzwa Matsika in an interview with Business Events recently.
“For us this COVID-19 pandemic is like a demon that we are trying to exorcise. We fall in the same category as the hospitality industry because ours is a game of numbers. COVID-19 does not allow numbers to thrive so it has really affected us,” he said.
The company’s had to postpone the 2019 edition of its national business award, which scheduled to be held in March 2020 due to the lockdown imposed by the government at the end of that month as one of the measures to contain the virus. Following the government’s relaxation of the lockdown restrictions during the last quarter of last year, the company pencilled the event for 15 January but had to put off again due to current Stage 4 lockdown which was necessitated by post-festive season spike in infection and fatalities.
“This is the second time we are postponing this major function. This was the 2019 national awards night that was supposed to take place in 2020 but we couldn’t do that last year and thought of moving it to this year, but again there is a lockdown so you can imagine the pressure that is put on us and it stalls every other process ahead because there are certain processes that cannot be done before certain functions are done,” Dr Matsika lamented.
The pandemic has also affected the company’s ability to pay for its operating expenses such as salaries and rentals among others.
“It has affected us big time and we’ve a team that has got to be salarised every month, we’ve got rentals that have to be sorted out, we’ve got service providers that have to be sorted out so the pressure is amazing. We can only pray for divine intervention nothing more, nothing less.” He said.