of an ailing public healthcare system, it is little surprise that private medical aid schemes in South Africa continue to flourish, banking on high demand for quality medical coverage, augmented by innovative customer-focused strategies.
Just like our country’s public healthcare system, the state of our energy and electricity supply remains dangerously hamstrung. While we have experienced a much-needed reprieve from load shedding over the past two months, there is little confidence that this will hold, based on our experience. It bolsters the argument for short-, medium- and long-term solutions to finally be free of rolling blackouts.
By the time load shedding was first introduced in 2008, Eskom had already embarked on a demand-side management programme in response to the changing energy landscape, exploring ways in which energy could be saved on the customer side. When the programme was first introduced in 2004 as a small-scale awareness creation initiative, it quickly evolved into an intensive drive to manage energy consumption during periods of energy shortfall after load shedding became a reality.