Developers give infrastructure little thought
IT SEEMS a habit in South Africa to forge ahead with
all manner of development, industrial, mining housing
etc without proper consultation with those responsible
for providing the required infrastructure.
Rina Belcher
Household consumption a tip of the iceberg
Two points :
The spokesman from
Eskom stated that they
were not supplying
Zimbabwe and Botswana
with power but stopped
short of mentioning
Mozambique – one must
wonder whether this
was merely an oversight
or maybe we are still
supporting the Mozal
aluminium smelter just
outside Maputo.
Although there will
be a loss of jobs, I firmly
believe that some lines
of pots at the Hillside
and Bayside smelters in
Richards Bay should be
stopped as soon as they
have done the pour. The
amount of electricity
consumed by Alusaf
(basically only selling
cheap electricity as all
components to make
aluminium are imported)
is way above what any
amount of household
savings can achieve.
As much as I
appreciate the continued
call by Eskom for us
to save electricity and
switch off geysers etc,
they (Eskom) need
to look at where the
majority of the power
is going – to the power
consuming smelting
facilities wherever they
may be as long as they
are consuming any South
African-produced power.
