Cape Town - The clothing industry and businesses preparing for the start of the festive season were among those that would be severely affected by Eskom’s call for its industrial customers to reduce their energy usage by 10 percent this week, says Apparel Manufacturers of South Africa executive director Johann Baard.
“This is the worst time of the year for Eskom to ask for this. It would be virtually impossible for manufacturers to meet these requests,” Baard said.
Last weekend, Eskom declared a power emergency and appealed to large industrial customers to reduce their energy consumption from 3pm to 8pm.
The parastatal said yesterday this call would extend to the rest of the week.
“Under different circumstances, you can work around your order books or reschedule, in some weeks you could use 10 percent less electricity but make it up in another week,” Baard said.
“We are just a few weeks away from the festive season. It is the absolute peak production period. Any call to conserve energy will have severe consequences.”
Clothing machines ran on electricity and the only way to cut usage would be by switching off machines, with a direct knock-on implication for the industry, he said. “This simply means 10 percent less goods are produced.”
Eskom said: “The power system has experienced an increase in electricity demand due to the weather conditions and an increase in load losses as a result of multiple tripping of generating units at the Majuba and Matimba power stations.
“Eskom is now following the protocol in terms of its emergency procedures in order to secure the power system.”
Cape Chamber of Commerce president Janine Myburgh said the economy was “held ransom by the inability of Eskom to provide electricity”.
“Financially this is very negative for the economy. Businesses will suffer. Investors won’t want to invest in a country where there is no certainty of electricity supply.
“People abroad will reconsider investing in the country and people here will reconsider growing their businesses,” she said.
Eskom provincial spokeswoman Jolene Henn said the utility service did not plan any load shedding today.
“If anything changes, we will have to implement load shedding. This is always the last resort, but till Wednesday we are not planning to load-shed. If the status changes, we will inform the public.”
She said Eskom could not predict load shedding more than a few days in advance.
“It depends on the system. There is always a risk.” - Cape Times