Monday, February 11, 2008
Skills Shortage
So here we are, the qualified technicians have already flown away, there is a skills shortage worldwide and how is the South African Government dealing with this, they are closing down technical training colleges and stuffing up really good facilities, so my son who has a matric and who wishes to follow an electrical career is finding it difficult to find an educational facility. Roodepoort, west admitted him this year but have said not to "bother" applying for his second trimester as they were closing the electrical department down and relocating it to Dobsinville. My son reckons his current educators are not even educated themselves , he is teaching his class maths as the appointed lecturer has no idea what he is doing, I myself have tried communicating with the Dean ("idiot" in charge") who is a Black female (high score for PDI) and no where near competent enough to run a check out at the local Spar, let alone run an educational facility, so off I went to Pretoria Technicon to see if we could transfer, I did thorough research on the website which indicated and discussed course content and so on, I should have realised it was another AWA situation when the telephone numbers listed on the website were no longer operational hence my physical presence in this once proud institution over a 100 years old and now really looking the part, not to mention that engineering studies had closed and had been relocated to Mamalodie and Arcadia. So I left Pretoria with an angry question, why are our black community so hell bent on ruining and systematically destroying everything. Why are the black students tolerating this disgusting level of education, can the students of today not see that they are literally wasting their time and that this all leads to the destruction of a system that requires educated people to manage it, ESKOM cannot maintain itself because of the SKILLS SHORTAGE and our government is closing technical colleges down or allowing uneducated lecturers to educate 'HELLO" this is not a downward slide, this is an avalanche wake up people, wake up parents, wake up leaders, wake up students
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1 comment:
I don't really want to comment on this article, but on one of your earlier articles.
The fact is ESKOM were hammered a number of years ago when they did their forward planning and built enough power stations to cater for the expected demand. However due to sanctions the growth in demand didn't happen. Unfortunately it took 10 years from placement of order to finish the power stations and so we only realised that we had too much generating capacity, when we really had too much. But this is where it got interesting, instead of selling off parts of the massive power generation industry to private players, ESKOM decided to embark on this mad strategy of making the "cheapest power in the world" which, if you did the maths could be proven to be unsustainable. ESKOM however knew exactly what they were doing. With the price so low, no businessman would be able to invest in building new plant. It would never pay. So when the Government said to ESKOM they are not allowed to build, they sat back and reduced maintenance, and reduced manpower, and made the electricity price cheaper still. The highly trained people in the industry were not happy twiddling their thumbs, so they started finding jobs elsewhere.
Now all the good things that happened after '94 helped increase the growth but ESKOM did not once pipe up and warn of the impending crisis, because they were gloating over their "lowest cost" position. Now we can all see what unsustainable really means. That low cost power which we had for a few years is going to be thrown out the window as ESKOM raises the price of electricity again in order to build the new power stations. Remember this, we could have built new power stations 10 years ago, using the local skills which we had in the country, the design skills, the manufacturing skills, the construction skills and commissioning skills, not to mention the operating skills were all here. Now in 2008 the design for the new power station comes from overseas, (at what exchange rate?) the manufacturing machinery and skills must be bought in from overseas, the erection we can partly do ourselves but need overseas supervision, possibly from our colleagues who ran out a couple of years ago and who are now earning dollars, like we are earning rands. So now we, as a country are really going to pay, big time. We all know what the shop owner does when you want a loaf of bread on Sunday when he is closed, emergency price equals double price.
So now what do we do? Start by saving electricity yourself, try and predict when you are going to put a big load on the ESKOM system. i.e. do your own load shedding when it suits you! Turn your geyser off when you know ESKOM is under pressure. If you don't they will just do it for you. So you still have a choice.
Put up a solar water heater, that way you will save electricity, and while you are contemplating the cost of a solar heater put pressure on ESKOM to pay half of your solar heater and the Government to not charge VAT on the solar heater. If they are really serious about reducing load, at a cost, this is the quickest and most sustainable way of doing it.
Finally ESKOM we don't want to hear any more about "cheapest electricity in the world" with the cheapest coal in the world, our electricity should naturally be the cheapest.
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