ILLEGAL CONNECTIONS: 211 JOBURG INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS ACCUSED OF STEALING CITY POWER'S ELECTRICITY

About 211 informal settlements in the City of Johannesburg have been accused of stealing City Power's electricity. City Power said it was losing billions of rands in revenue. City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said a total of five lives had been lost due to electrocution.

On Wednesday, City Power pounced on the informal settlement and removed illegal connections. Mangena said they were in the area conducting cut-offs for the second time in less than a month. “We won’t get tired to return and cut off their illegal electricity, because they are costly not only to us, but to infrastructure. We have witnessed many of our substations exploding because of overloading caused by illegal connections.”

“Whenever, there is an outage caused by an explosion, legal consumers are the ones suffering, including those working from home. They might lose their jobs due to rampant outages caused by overloading,” Mangena said.

Mangena advised residents to petition government in order to have legal electricity installed. “We have about half a million households that we provide legally with electricity. We also have 211 informal settlements with an estimation of about 5 000 households that are illegally connected. We think that the number of illegal connections could be more.”

[Adapted from News24, 9 March 2021]

A photograph in the entrance hall at Komati Power Station shows the plant in better times, its nine generating units belching steam and smoke into the night sky.
Those days are never coming back: Komati’s sole remaining working unit is facing closure within two years under plans by state power utility Eskom Holdings SOC to shut about a quarter of its coal-fired capacity by 2030. Next door at the Goedehoop mine, arrays of solar panels line the main access road, a sign of what may be to come for South Africa’s coal belt.
For decades, almost all the electricity needed to power Africa’s most industrialised economy has been produced by a fleet of aging coal-fired plants constructed alongside the mines to the east of Johannesburg. That’s made the province of Mpumalanga, in which Komati is located, one of the most coal-dependent and polluted regions on Earth.
Decommissioning those plants is essential if President Cyril Ramaphosa is to meet a commitment to reach net-zero carbon-dioxide emissions by 2050, and yet the closures also put tens of thousands of jobs at risk.

[Source: https://www.engineeringnews.co.za]

[Source: Google Images – Saldanha Bay Industrial Development Zone]

SALDANHA BAY INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT ZONE ATTRACTS INVESTMENTS

February 28, 2021

The Saldanha Bay Industrial Development Zone has to date attracted over R21 billion worth of investments, says Trade, Industry and Competition Deputy Minister Fikile Majola.
The Deputy Minister said these investments were at different stages of development and two of them, with private investment value of R380 million have already started constructing their manufacturing facilities.
The SBIDZ is the first special economic zone (SEZ) to be located within a port and is the only sector-specific SEZ in South Africa catering specifically to the energy and maritime industries.
“The SBIDZ has also signed eight new investment agreements with operational companies in the maritime, oil and gas sectors. These investments will lead to permanent and sustainable jobs that the country needs to create for its citizens.”
“The development of the zone will also have to align and integrate with the entire area of Saldanha and West Coast region to achieve real projects that benefit all,” said Majola.
Chief Executive Officer of the SBIDZ, Kaashifah Beukes, said “We are proud to have emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic and are on track to usher in projects worth more than R300 million in capital investment towards investor infrastructure, bringing a much-needed boost to our construction sector and jobs in the West Coast, and ultimately, the country,” she said.

[Source: Researchgate.net]