Eskom power cuts knock our economy

THE acronym “LOL” is now symbolic of doom and gloom, as we brace ourselves for serious and dire financial consequences with Eskom’s drastic measures of “dictatorial” power restrictions.

It is indeed shocking (even without electricity) to comprehend that a twohour loss of power a day, over a five regions day work week, equates to 10 hours of power loss per given working week.

Extrapolating on this figure, it means that, for a given month, we would then lose 40 hours of power per month. As a normal working day constitutes eight hours, we would then, in effect, lose five full working days per given month, ie a loss of one full working week per month!

Losing a full week per month x 12 months equates to a total loss of 12 weeks per year, namely a total loss of three months per given year! This astounding loss represents, in effect, a total loss of 25% of South Africa’s productivity, time-wise – together with all its associated reduction in economic indicators, etc – over a given year. While Eskom might not necessarily enforce restrictions for an entire year, the calculations above certainly focus on the enormity of our difficulties.

Desmond Tutu once aptly described South Africa as a “rainbow nation”. While this is a beautiful description of patriotic South Africans, it is nevertheless believed that at the end of every rainbow lies a beautiful pot of gold. Someone has stolen that pot of gold now. ARNIL KISSOON Isipingo Beach