Cosatu: Mass action over power

Johannesburg - The National Energy Regulator's admission that Eskom's load-shedding had cost the economy a massive R50bn has vindicated mass protest action over the electricity crisis, Cosatu said on Wednesday.

Congress of SA Trade Unions spokesperson Patrick Craven said the statement by Nersa CEO Smunda Mokoena had confirmed the federation's view that the energy crisis posed a real threat of job losses, an economic slowdown and far fewer news jobs being created.

"It flatly contradicts the assurance given by Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin in January that 'the government is confident that through the education of electricity use, the current economic growth could be maintained'."

Mokoena told a conference on Wednesday that the situation was a "power emergency" instead of a power crisis because, as he put it, the situation had been "controllable".

It had also led to a renewed focus on the introduction of non-Eskom power generation, he said.

"Furthermore, the emergency identified improvements needed to industry codes and standards, and created an awareness of future electricity prices."

Mokoena said the country had come close to a total blackout.

"It was the voluntary load reduction of the public and industry that allowed Eskom to get its coal stocks under control."

However, he said that Eskom had become over-stretched.

"It must now build power stations, it must keep the lights burning and it must return the situation to normality."

There had to be some form of intervention by other structures.

Cosatu said it was more determined than ever to fight to save all the jobs that were now on the line.

Craven said the federation was committed to supporting the national campaign to reduce electricity consumption and find a lasting solution to the crisis.

The federation stood staunchly by the main demand that "as an absolutely basic principle, the costs of the power-cuts are not born by the poorest in society, and that workers are not retrenched as a result of the power-cuts .

"Workers and the poor must not have to pay, through either higher tariffs or losing their jobs, for a crisis that is the fault of a government error in not providing Eskom with the money they insisted they needed to build new generating capacity in the late 1990s," he said.

- SAPA