Pretoria - The public-private partnership of the Gauteng government’s special economic zones is among companies which have suffered huge financial and production losses due to the massive collapse of electrical pylons in Tshwane over the weekend.
A series of companies, including Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa and their supplier networks, were left reeling as a result of the outages, with many saying it was an act of sabotage.
Police are, however, investigating all possibilities.
Yesterday, Ford spokesperson Minesh Bhagaloo revealed that the collapse of the powerlines, which fell on the N4 highway on Sunday night, and which resulted in a power outage affecting large parts of Pretoria east and north, included Ford’s Silverton Vehicle Assembly Plant and its local suppliers.
Bhagaloo said the initial assessment by the City of Tshwane’s energy and electricity team found that at least six pylons had collapsed and were badly damaged.
“As a result of the incident, all three (daily) shifts at the Silverton Plant are currently suspended, resulting in a loss of approximately 720 Ranger units per day, as per the plant’s daily installed capacity.
“The company has an employee base of approximately 5 500 employees, and approximately 60 000 jobs across Ford’s local supplier network, all of whom are affected by this outage.”
Bhagaloo said his company was working with both the City of Tshwane and Eskom to resolve the issue, but as yet do not have an indication of when power will be fully restored to their facilities.
While no indication had been given about possible job losses due to lack of power, City of Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink told the media that they were working around the clock to fix the problem and to avert more financial losses to their business partners.
“Eskom is assisting us with the sourcing of the monopoles. But we are also speaking to the monopole manufacturer.
“The focus is to complete the work as soon as possible,” Brink said.
Initially discussions centred on using monopoles as a temporary structure.
“But the monopoles, which are being discussed, can be a permanent solution because, as opposed to pylons, monopoles don’t offer value when being vandalised or stripped. They are not as vulnerable to vandalism.”
Brink also expressed concern that local businesses were hard hit by the unavailability of power supply.
The affected areas include part of the economic zones for the Tshwane Municipality and the Gauteng government.
In February last year, the then Gauteng premier, David Makhura, injected billions of rand to revitalise the special economic zones, to create thousands of jobs to benefit the local small businesses and the community of Mamelodi. The investment came after South Africa emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in the loss of jobs and downgrade of the local economy.
The zone forms part of the industrialisation agenda, and Makhura said progress was being made in its implementation, currently taking place in Silverton. Three spheres of government were investing R3.3 billion in the project's infrastructure.
The gesture by the government, Makhura said, had unlocked a R4.3bn investment by suppliers, and a further R15.8bn investment announced by Ford Motor Company on February 8.
“Working with the Mamelodi community, entrepreneurs and small micro medium enterprises, Tshwane automotive zone is providing non-financial and financial support to 262 small businesses, Grades 1-7.”
Local small businesses would benefit from more than R1.7bn, which was 47% of infrastructure spent already allocated. At least R531 million of work would be allocated to township small businesses in the coming months to construct the first set of factories.
At the time, Makhura said: “Within the next 12 months, a total of 3 288 new permanent jobs will be created at this special economic zone – 1 200 by Ford and 2 088 by the suppliers.
“In addition, 8 600 construction-related jobs have already been created during Phase1.”
Pretoria News