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BL Premium reports that the inclusion of the private sector to play a major role in resolving the country’s energy crisis as outlined in the plan to end load-shedding presented by President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday has been widely welcomed by business leaders.
But one of the unions representing the power utility's workers said the plan left the impression that the government was “in a rush to facilitate the privatisation of Eskom”. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which alongside the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), represents most of the estimated 46,000 workers at Eskom, said in a statement that it seemed from the president’s address that the private sector, not Eskom, was seen as a priority in resolving the energy crisis. “Eskom is made to fail to pave the way for the addition of private players in the energy sector… Giving the responsibility to build new capacity to the private sector is going to destroy Eskom,” the NUM said. The union also objected to the announcement by Ramaphosa that the licensing threshold for independent power producers, which was raised from 1MW to 100MW last year, will be removed completely. “Most mining companies will start producing electricity for their operations, which will leave Eskom with no big customers,” the union said. In stark contrast to the response from NUM, the Minerals Council SA, Business Unity SA (Busa) and the Energy Intensive Users Group of SA welcomed the interventions announced by the president. Highlighting the need to implement the plan as swiftly as possible, UCT energy expert Anton Eberhard reckoned that, if all the recommendations outlined by Ramaphosa were implemented within six months, SA could expect load-shedding to diminish and power cuts to end in three years.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Denene Erasmus at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
- Read too, South African miners commit to playing their part to support new energy plan, at Engineering News
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page