This news aggregator site highlights South African labour news from a wide range of internet and print sources. Each posting has a synopsis of the source article, together with a link or reference to the original. Postings cover the range of labour related matters from industrial relations to generalist human resources.
Mining Weekly reports that amid intense load-shedding, which has been under way continuously since early September and has at times been implemented at Stage 6, President Cyril Ramaphosa has warned that there is “no quick fix” to the problem, which he says has “a long history”.
Writing in his weekly newsletter, the President acknowledged widespread public anger, which he described as “wholly justified”. While conspicuously refraining from criticising the current Eskom leadership, the President said: “Given the unpredictable performance of Eskom’s fleet of coal-fired power stations, we will not be able to eliminate loadshedding in the short term. This is the unfortunate reality of our situation, which has had a long history.” No elaboration was provided by Ramaphosa regarding this “long history”, but it has been widely reported that government’s failure to ensure that new capacity was built timeously in line with Eskom’s warnings that such capacity would be required before 2010 is a key cause of the current crisis. Once the build programme eventually began in 2007, it soon emerged to be extremely poorly planned, with execution further hampered by design defects and corruption. The crisis has been made substantially worse in recent years by strikes, sabotage and ongoing corruption at certain stations. Ramaphosa argued in his letter that addressing breakdowns represented a “significant challenge given the average age of power stations, and that in the past critical maintenance was not undertaken at the necessary intervals”. He added that government was giving close attention to the skills, experience and capabilities of the Eskom leadership to ensure that the company had the best people at all levels of the organisation. It was reported on the weekend that board changes could be announced soon. Ramaphosa also insisted that there were real signs of progress and good reasons to be optimistic, “if we look just beyond the most immediate crisis”.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard at Mining Weekly
- Lees ook, ‘Ons vorder met kragprobleem’ – Ramaphosa, by Maroela Media
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page