Avon power plant construction delayed due to protests

Group Five said they will not re-employ workers.

October 7, 2015

Jacqueline Herbst 2 minutes read

Private security guards, some dressed in riot gear, keep and eye on the mob. Behind them is one of the storage tanks of the Avon peaking power plant.

Violent protests flared up again last week outside the Avon peaking power plant when Group Five decided to stick to their guns and not re-employ workers fired from the plant on July 29.

Guards armed with rubber bullets and some wearing riot gear kept a watchful eye from behind barbed wired fencing, protecting the construction site and a small group of workers on the inside.

On Thursday, KDM mayor, Ricardo Mthembu addressed the mob and said that he supported them.

A meeting was called on Friday between shop stewards, Group Five and Mthembu, where Group Five refused to give in to workers’ demands.

“Given the failure of the previous attempt to remobilise dismissed workers, Group Five does not see the re-employment of dismissed strikers as warranted, justified or in the best interest of the project,” said Group Five director, Richard du Toit.

Meanwhile, Group Five obtained a court interdict on Friday, prohibiting any further protests at or around the plant or on the road that runs past it.

With the interdict in place, angry protesters regrouped on the Glendale road, just off the R102 and which leads to the Esenembe road, in the early hours of Monday morning, restricting access to the road at various points from Shayamoya up to the Cranbrook turn-off.

Umhlali SAPS Captain Yogendran Maharaj said they were up all night trying to subdue a group of about 50 troublemakers who, among other things, chopped down a gum tree to block the road and threw bricks onto the road.

Maharaj said protesters used the Shayamoya township as a cover and came from different directions to block the road.

“Public order police used teargas and rubber bullets to disperse the mob and we arrested three people,” said Maharaj.

He said a total of five people had been arrested since the start of the riots.

On Tuesday morning the situation was calm but a march to hand over a memorandum was planned for Thursday, October 8.

KDM traffic services’ Johnny Moodley said he gave permission for the march to take place on the Esenembe road at the plant on Thursday and that it was not in contravention of Group Five’s interdict.

“There is a difference between protest action and a march. Thursday’s march is only a peaceful march to hand over a memorandum to Group Five,” said Moodley.

Group Five had not been able to access the site or work there since August 26 due to threats of violence and intimidation by dismissed strikers.

Avon peaking power plant construction director, Pascal Bourdeaux said the project was already eight weeks behind schedule due to the unrest.

He said the level of consequences caused by the delay were far reaching, affecting not only Group Five but also Eskom and the national department of energy who are Avon’s clients, investors and South African banks (repayment of project financed will be delayed) and everyone living in South Africa because the longer it took for the plant to come online, the longer before it can help to reduce load shedding.

He said the delay in construction also had a direct bearing on KDM as ten percent of the plant’s total income is meant to go to a local trust to benefit the community.

Du Toit said there was never a dispute around working hours as had been alleged.

“The dispute leading to the initial dismissal primarily pertained to demands for the payment of transport and a site completion bonus,” he said.