When Pracash Arendse got a job at the Isolar factory in Atlantis he was excited that he would be able to provide for his family. Jobs are hard to get in this suburb north of Cape Town, and many households live in poverty.
Arendse, who lives in Atlantis’s Protea Park, is now facing a daunting task of providing for his wife and three children because he and his fellow employees last received wages in February.

Isolar manufactures solar geysers. Because of a lack of orders from the Department of Energy, the company has been on the verge of closure with 85 jobs at risk. GroundUp has reported how the company has been let down by government. The company started in the first place because of a government subsidised programme to buy solar geysers. But the programme has crashed due to a budget cut from R384 million to R0.

With no funds in sight to pay its employees, the company advised its 85 employees to claim benefits from the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF).

But the employees have not been through a retrenchment process, and according to labour lawyer Michael Bagraim this is illegal. “They haven’t been dismissed yet. They should have been retrenched first to get UIF and severance payment,” said Bagraim.

He advised the factory’s employees to go to the Department of Labour to lodge a complaint about non-payment of wages and thereafter to go to the Commission for Conciliation‚ Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) to launch an application for unfair labour practices.

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The SA Bureau of Standards (SABS) has been strongly criticised by business, which says the entity is losing the country at least R4 billion a year in exports in the manufacturing and engineering sectors alone.

This comes after years of businesses complaining about a lack of testing by the SABS, resulting in manufacturers losing contracts because they are unable to obtain the SABS mark timeously, or they have been unable to renew 2 600 permits to use the mark.

Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies is assessing representations from the SABS board on why he should not go ahead with his intention to put the entity under administration for not performing to its mandate. The SABS falls under Davies’ department.

Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa economist Marique Kruger said the lack of testing and certification by the SABS within the required time frames was a concern, as certification was often needed for products to be sold locally and internationally.

Kruger said trade deals being delayed or cancelled due to a lack of testing hit smaller businesses the hardest and caused a loss of billions in exports a year in the manufacturing and engineering sectors.

“The impact on the domestic production value chain is also huge,” she said.

Director at GAP Holdings, Theuns van Aardt, said manufacturers in the solar water heating industry were “tearing their hair out” because they “cannot get a system approved by the SABS”.

He said the piping, pump and valve industries were similarly affected, and were “being put at massive risk”.

Business development manager Carolien van der Horst of the SA Capital Equipment Export Council said the SABS was also failing to audit the local content of products supplied in government contracts as stipulated in government’s Industrial Policy Action Plan.

Van der Horst said this resulted in companies possibly supplying imported products when servicing tenders from state entities. However, she said it seemed that no one wanted to pay for the SABS to conduct these audits.

SABS CEO Boni Mehlomakulu hit back at industry and the department of trade and industry this week, saying she was fulfilling her mandate according to policy that was implemented in 2005.

She said the issues affecting industry were inherent in the policy, which emerged from the 2004 National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) report, titled Modernising the South African Technical Infrastructure.

Informed by a department of trade and industry position paper in part authored by Lionel October, who was then the department’s deputy director-general, Nedlac agreed that the SABS should split into a commercial testing and certification entity, and its statutory standards setting body should be funded by government.

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​Droogfontein Solar Power put their support behind the Solar Water Heating Enterprise Development (SWHED) programme in Kimberley in 2016 and continues to fund this programme that is providing skills, jobs and creating local enterprises.

Droogfontein Solar Power put their support behind the Solar Water Heating Enterprise Development (SWHED) programme in Kimberley in 2016 and continues to fund this programme that is providing skills, jobs and creating local enterprises. Photo: Supplied

Droogfontein Solar Power continues to fund its programme that is providing jobs and creating local enter­prises.

In 2016, Droogfontein put its support behind the Solar Water Heating Enterprise Development (SWHED) programme in Kimberley, and is still doing so.

“This project is changing lives, with a number of young people having already found either permanent employment or enrolled into full-time further studies after completing the initial SWH training,” said Hlengiwe Radebe, economic development director of Droogfontein.

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The procurement processes for the installation of solar energy systems under the Department of Energy’s (DoE’s) Solar Water Heating programme has not yet started, with no systems installed during the 2015/16 and 2016/17 financial years.
In response to a Parliamentary question, Energy Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi explained that the delay in the installation process was owing to the need to finalise the necessary controls and systems to mitigate the the problems experienced in the previous roll-out model.
Along with a global positioning system verification and tracking system, these included local buy-in from municipalities through the signing of the municipal framework agreement and the identification of the designated installation areas (DIAs) within the municipality, as well as the identification and accredited training of installers in each DIA.
Further mitigation comprised the social facilitation to ensure that the beneficiary community has been exposed to the operational requirements of solar water heater systems, and to align community expectations through the social facilitation platform.
The DoE also confirmed the purchase of 59 396 units as at April 3, 2017, which are currently being stored. 

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South African rocket scientist Andre Nel has been shortlisted as a finalist in the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation.
Nel invented a hybrid, solar microgrid solution, the GreenTower Microgrid, which uses 90% less energy to heat water.
​Only one-third of Africans have access to grid-connected electricity and heating water accounts for the majority of electricity costs in homes and offices.
A single unit of the GreenTower Microgrid packaged in insulated recycled shipping containers can service 15 homes, and reduce a community's electricity demand by 65%, considerably easing the pressure on the national power grid.

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Association of Municipal Electricity Users (AMEU) strategic advisor Peter Fowles recently issued a warning to municipalities against signing Letters of Intent or similar documents with private companies offering solar water heater (SWH) installations at no cost. He said these offers are made in anticipation of Department of Energy (DoE) funding, but that there is no application process in place at present.
Fowles warned that the 2008 DoE mandate to Eskom to install 1-million SWH systems under a conditional grant had been terminated and that the DoE had instead assumed responsibility for implementing the National Solar Water Heater Programme (NSWHP).
Subsequent to terminating the mandate, the DoE reported at the National NSWHP Workshop for municipalities on 4 September 2015 that roughly 400 000 of the1-million mandated SWHs had been installed in residential areas since 2004.
It said these installations had failed to lower demand as they had been focused on areas of low consumption. The installations were also found to contain predominantly imported components and the installation work was sub-standard. This the department ascribed to a lack of training.
The DoE also said verification of the number and locations of the SWH installations is unreliable as no monitoring had been done. Similarly, maintenance work on installed heaters had been neglected, causing households without electric water heating systems to heat water with kettles, hot plates or wood fires.

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