Popular West Lothian shopkeeper fears he'll go bust after eye watering £30,000 energy bill

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A popular shopkeeper who came to the rescue of locals during the pandemic and Beast from the East could have to close his doors after being hit with a £30,000 energy bill.Waz Abbas, who owns Waz’s store in Goschen Place, Broxburn, will see his bill rise from £7500 to over £29,000 a year after he received a quote for his gas and electricity bill from E.ON.He says he simply can’t afford it, adding thousands of small businesses like his will go to the wall without government help.

He added new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, needs to urgently implement a price cap for businesses, something that doesn’t happen just now.Waz said: “It’s unbelievable how much I’ve been told to pay.

We’ve been open 23 years but might not last because of this.“Everything that has happened over the last few years like the pandemic, the bad snow, we always seem to find a solution for it.“But right now I’m just looking at a wall that is too big to climb or even comprehend.“How can we survive this?”Waz said the worry of how he will pay the bills is weighing heavily on him and wife Assfa, who had to give up working in the shop due to poor health.He continued: “We are very worried about it all, this is affecting our health.“My wife had a heart attack last year at the age of 44 and the pressure on her is too much.“If I was to bring her back into work full time and get rid of staff it would mean I would have to unemploy someone, bring my wife back, who’s not fit to work, but even at that, we’d have to work for nothing.

We’d be working for no wage just to keep the business running.“We could use our savings to survive but after a year, we’re done.