'More power cuts for consumers'

Brendan Ryan

Johannesburg - Power cuts must be spread evenly across all South Africa's users instead of being focussed on the country's 138 large mining and industrial users.

That's according to Chamber of Mines chief economist Roger Baxter who said business was becoming frustrated by government's limited leadership in dealing with the national crisis.

"We are eight months into the crisis. You have to ask what the other sectors have done and why government has not played a more assertive role in ensuring that power rationing and demand curtailment have been properly shared across all sectors of the economy," Baxter commented.

Addressing a conference on the power crisis organised by the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers, Baxter pointed out mining uses 15% of the country's power which is less than the 17% used by households.

"Mining and a few of the other large industrial customers are carrying the full burden of the 10% demand reduction. This is an industrial policy decision made by Eskom with significant implications for this country's economy - especially for exports and employment," he said.

Baxter added a survey of mining companies had indicated that mining employment is likely to reduce substantially if the 10% cut is maintained indefinitely.

"The mining companies are doing everything possible to alleviate the impact of this via early retirement, voluntary retrenchment and contractor replacement rather than compulsory retrenchment," he said.

Solar geysers

Baxter said planned investment over the next five years could be reduced by between R16bn and R23bn which would affect production, gross domestic product and, ultimately, employment.

He pointed out that the negative fallout could also hit South Africa's capital inflows because a large portion of the foreign investment money coming into the country has been going into the purchase of mining equities.

Baxter said that converting one million of South Africa's 8m households to solar-powered geysers would save 2 000MW of power at peak demand periods.

"What is the government doing about promoting the installation of solar geysers? Where is the campaign to replace inefficient incandescent light bulbs with efficient compact fluorescent light bulb?"

"The message to conserve power has not gone out to the average South African," Baxter stated.

- MiningMX.com

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- Mining MX