The current situation being experienced by consumers of erratic, or non-supply of water by Ugu District is a case in point. While there is some level of sympathy for management in that the actions of the staff are random and unpredictable, the mere fact that the perpetrators of the alleged damage and sabotage to infrastructure can act with apparent impunity is an indictment on the control and management exercised by the employer over their staff.
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While the impact of outages is generally focused on water intensive businesses (those that utilise water as part of their manufacturing processes or service offerings), it is often overlooked that large employers are also affected as their staff ablution and canteen facilities are rendered inoperable as well. Most water intensive users also require a certainty of supply before starting up their production lines, as interruptions mid-process could result in large amounts of wasted and reject work in process. In addition, sophisticated machinery can suffer catastrophic damage due to sudden loss of water supply. A major manufacturing concern in the edible oils sector was forced to place over 300 employees on short-time for 2 days, to avoid such a scenario. Apart from lost production and turnover, significant loss of income was suffered by these employees and their dependants.
Low ranking
Recent data has placed us, a country almost at the bottom of tables in respect of international competitiveness. Much of this is ascribed to the high cost of inputs, so it is manifestly unfair to expect businesses to invest in additional infrastructure to mitigate the poor performance of those entities tasked with providing services such as water and electricity. Many businesses were forced to invest heavily in alternative power sources during the Eskom load shedding fiasco-much of which is now lying idle, as sunk costs.
The reality is, that the operating environment for businesses as become much more competitive over the last few years. Municipalities and Metros are on large investment attraction drives, offering incentives such as rates rebates and subsidised land costs to entice new businesses. Added to this now, will be certainty and reliability of bulk service provision.
Loss of confidence
There has already been an indication that some large operations have lost confidence in the District government’s ability and/or willingness to confront, contain and permanently resolve the situation bedevilling our water supply, and are already investigation relocation options. This should be of serious concern to the powers that be.
On the part of organised labour tacitly or explicitly supporting the alleged criminal actions of their members, they need to be appraised of the long-term consequences of what they clearly regard as short-term actions to pressure their employers to attain their objectives.
After matriculating, Vijay Naidoo studied Economics in the UK. Upon his return, hejoined the family construction business as MD for 10 years.
He subsequently joined his sister in their furniture manufacturing business as director for quality assurance and operations. He was responsible for all quality aspects of their products, and led the project to the business achieving an ISO 9000 quality accreditation. As an export focused business, this was important for our international competitiveness.
Mr Naidoo has an abiding interest in quality management and productivity improvement, particularly in manufacturing.
More recently, he has focused a lot of his time on giving back to the community by way of mentorship of small businesses and sitting on the executive of the South Coast Chamber of Commerce. He also sits on the Board of the Ugu South Coast Development Agency.
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