All it has managed to build is a class of people who are unproductive
20 November 2023 - 16:21
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If you run power stations at 50% of their capacity when they can run at 85%, your power station capital investment is extremely inefficient. If you are paying more for your coal than the market price, or are using inefficient transport to get it to your power station, that too is inefficient.
If you employ 50% more staff than you need and continue to give them huge increases, you are inefficient. If you require R250bn of bridging finance, you are inefficient in the use of capital.
If your trains don’t run, but you still employ the same number of people and don’t use the infrastructure to its capacity, that is inefficient. If freight has to go by road, with one driver per truck, when a train can pull 100 containers with two drivers, that is inefficient.
If your harbours are running at 40% of capacity with the same staff, that’s inefficient. Forty to 50 ships sitting outside your ports waiting for a berth is inefficient. When hundreds of trucks must sit waiting for containers with drivers, that is inefficient.
When you waste R50bn on an airline that cannot make a profit, while others around it either do or go bankrupt, that is inefficient.
Yet all around there are efficient, well-run businesses in this country. Why is that? It is because, as former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher said, the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.
The ANC government has iced out the productive, motivated people that have made the modern industrialised world because of political dogma. All it has managed to build is a class of people who are unproductive.
The results are clear, so now it’s just about the pride of public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan and his ANC cadres.
Rob Tiffin Cape Town
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
LETTER: ANC’s inefficiency
All it has managed to build is a class of people who are unproductive
If you run power stations at 50% of their capacity when they can run at 85%, your power station capital investment is extremely inefficient. If you are paying more for your coal than the market price, or are using inefficient transport to get it to your power station, that too is inefficient.
If you employ 50% more staff than you need and continue to give them huge increases, you are inefficient. If you require R250bn of bridging finance, you are inefficient in the use of capital.
If your trains don’t run, but you still employ the same number of people and don’t use the infrastructure to its capacity, that is inefficient. If freight has to go by road, with one driver per truck, when a train can pull 100 containers with two drivers, that is inefficient.
If your harbours are running at 40% of capacity with the same staff, that’s inefficient. Forty to 50 ships sitting outside your ports waiting for a berth is inefficient. When hundreds of trucks must sit waiting for containers with drivers, that is inefficient.
When you waste R50bn on an airline that cannot make a profit, while others around it either do or go bankrupt, that is inefficient.
Yet all around there are efficient, well-run businesses in this country. Why is that? It is because, as former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher said, the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.
The ANC government has iced out the productive, motivated people that have made the modern industrialised world because of political dogma. All it has managed to build is a class of people who are unproductive.
The results are clear, so now it’s just about the pride of public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan and his ANC cadres.
Rob Tiffin
Cape Town
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
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