A South African trade union has warned that with businesses crumbling due to load shedding, very soon there will be massive job losses.
A SOUTH African trade union has said that with businesses crumbling due to load shedding, very soon there will be massive job losses.
United Association of South Africa (UASA) spokesperson Abigail Moyo said that “businesses and jobs crumble as Eskom stumbles on”.
Earlier on Tuesday, the DFA reported that South Africa is experiencing its longest continuous streak of load shedding.
Developers of the mobile application EskomSePush, say the bout of uninterrupted load shedding, which began on September 8, is at more than 441 hours and counting, including the record high levels of Stage 6 load shedding.
In a statement, Moyo said it was totally unacceptable that South Africans are now being forced to accept load shedding as part of their daily lives.
Moyo said the fact that Eskom signed on 18 Eskom veterans to keep the lights on is nothing to admire or cheer about. Instead, this should have been done decades ago. The situation has been allowed to run out of hand for years, to the detriment of workers and their families, businesses and the economy as a whole.
She said the catastrophic blackouts across South Africa, with load shedding as a daily routine, leave the country powerless for up to eight hours per day.
Our country runs on electricity. Eskom was first warned in the late 1990s that it should build power stations and update its systems. Now, more than 20 years later, we are in ruins, Moyo said.
“Businesses, small and large, crumble due to disruptions in productivity coupled with additional expenses for alternative power supplies. Over and above, massive job losses will soon follow if enterprises cannot make a profit or pay their workers. Our members have household and other expenses to pay for, while sometimes getting paid less due to load shedding disrupting their work life,” she said.
Moyo said that Eskom’s maladministration is making it impossible to do business as usual. President Cyril Ramaphosa tabled an emergency plan months ago – why has this still not been implemented, she asked.
“With another 100 experts keen to be appointed and plans under way to buy 1,000MW from other private power suppliers, UASA urges politicians and other stakeholders to step aside and allow Eskom CEO Andre De Ruyter to take the decisive action needed. We especially encourage Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan to give De Ruyter his full support,” Moyo said.
She said that for two decades almost nothing was done to stabilise and sustain the power utility. We cannot allow Eskom to remain a daily disaster, solutions must be implemented now, she said.
“Workers deserve better service from our service providers. Each year electricity tariffs are increased, but consumers pay more for a service that hardly exists. Eskom must do better in terms of service delivery. The country is going down the drain,” Moyo said.
