Today's meeting agenda: cutting demand
January 29, 2008
By Justin Brown and Terry Bell
Johannesburg - Eskom's Midrand conference facilities will host another emergency meeting today with the country's largest power users and officials from the departments of minerals and energy, and public enterprises, to try to resolve the energy crisis.
This follows Sunday's meeting in Pretoria between Buyelwa Sonjica, the minister of minerals and energy; Alec Erwin, the minister of public enterprises; Eskom; the mining industry and its trade unions.
Vimla Maistry, a spokesperson for the department of public enterprises, said the key issue at today's meeting was how to reduce demand.
Much of the mining industry has been closed since Friday, after Eskom asked it to cut power to a minimum to avoid a failure of the power grid.
Eskom warned initially that power could be kept to a minimum for two to four weeks.
The utility's power generation has been deteriorating this month because of plan failures, wet weather that made burning coal difficult, and coal shortages.
Reuters reported yesterday that Eskom had asked local coal producers to find an extra 5 million tons of the fuel in the next quarter, to ensure that it had enough to avoid power cuts and build stockpiles ahead of winter.
Eskom agreed at the weekend to supply mining houses with 75 percent of their normal average power consumption.
The meeting today will discuss the possibility of Eskom supplying the mining industry with 90 percent of its average power, while looking at ways the sector can cut back 10 percent of its energy demand.
Eskom has said it would like to cut power demand by up to 20 percent.
In another development, the Federation of Unions of SA (Fedusa) yesterday filed notice of protest action to defend the socioeconomic interests of workers in the face of the electricity crisis.
The action is designed to force the government and business to jointly discuss with the unions possible solutions to the crisis.
Dennis George, Fedusa's general secretary, said: "The government has been dealing with this crisis in a piecemeal way when we should be acting collectively, with transparency and in good faith."
Unions across the board were under pressure from members who feared losing their jobs and income. "We are already having reports of casual workers being laid off," he said.
The notice goes through the National Economic Labour and Development Council - the tripartite institution that was established to discuss and advise on government policies. Fedusa maintains that this is the venue where the government should discuss its intentions.
Cosatu was unaware last night that Fedusa had lodged the notice, but the major federation's spokesperson, Patrick Craven, also stressed that there could be no solution without the involvement of the labour movement. "Labour must be included in any discussions [about the way forward]," he said.
Although considerable attention has been paid to the effects of power shedding on the mining industry, unions report that members in "almost every single sector" are starting to feel the pinch.
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