What is the difference between South Africa and the Titanic? ...
The Titanic's lights were on when it sank.
I'm sure similar jokes were making the rounds during the California electricity crisis when ENRON was manipulating their power supplies in 2000 and 2001. ENRON also features indirectly in South Africa's power problem.
The current electricity crisis in South Africa is the result of mainly two issues. The first was a decision by government not to build new power stations, as it wished to privatise power generation. Issues such as the ENRON debacle caused it to reconsider. Too little was done too late and we were irrevocably headed for disaster.
That was ENRON. The other issue was and is ESCOM's poor maintenance of its infrastructure. ESCOM, like so many state and parastatal organisations in South Africa, failed to understand that maintenance, though not a glamorous activity, needed to be done and needed competent engineers and technicians to manage and do it. Now that at last they're realising it, there is a problem.
There are not enough engineers and technicians to meet the need. Beeld newspaper today reported that ESCOM, has a shortage of hundreds of engineers and projects a shortage of thousands of technicians over the next five years. The 2010 Soccer World Cup, of course, falls right in the period of five years.
ESCOM is now considering re-employing engineers and technicians previously retrenched and forced to retire due to affirmative action. Will it work? Knowledge and skills that are not used, decay over time. Will they be up to the task? Will the current incumbents of positions previously occupied by the returning engineers, accept their guidance?
Many South Africans could see this situation coming and warned government and ESCOM long ago. It is only natural that they would now bask in that exquisitely destructive emotion, schadenfreude.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Caught between ENRON and ESCOM
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Hi Leon,
ReplyDeleteI also wonder if ESKOM has put in place any strategies to transfer the skills of these "re-contracted" engineers to other permanent staff members. If not, this is not a sustainable solution. I suspect we will face a similar predicament in a couple of years when these people are no longer available.
Sonja
ReplyDeleteI see you've also blogged on the ESCOM issue over at Narrative Lab. I agree with your stated view that narrative would be the ideal vehicle to facilitate knowledge transfer between returning old-timers and current staff. I would go further and suggest that narrative could also play a role in re-kindling the knowledge and skills of re-contracted staff. Now how do you get ESCOM to buy into that?