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Friday, June 7, 2002 - Web posted at 8:17:19 am GMT

By Mariam Isa

DURBAN, June 7 (Reuters) -- One of South Africa's biggest employers believes the rate of AIDS infection among staff is now on the decline thanks to a comprehensive programme which costs it around 180 million rand ($18.4 million) annually.

South Africa has the highest number of people living with the deadly HIV-AIDS in the world, with one in nine of the country's 43 million people infected.

Power utility company Eskom [ESCJ.UL] said the rate of infection in the company was currently estimated at nine percent -- down from 12 percent in 1995.

Seven years ago it was predicting a quarter of the workforce would be infected by 2003.

Eskom's chief medical officer Charles Roos told Reuters money the company was spending to educate and provide medical and life insurance, pensions, death benefits and AIDS-related counselling to its 35,000 staff had peaked at 188 million rand in 1999.

This was equivalent to between eight and 10 percent of the company's payroll, versus a forecast of 15 percent in 1995.

"We think the costs (of the epidemic) and the infection rate have peaked. We are now on a downward trend -- spending on AIDS-related programmes should level off at between 75 and 80 million rand by 2009," he said.

"It has been sustainable and it makes business sense." he added.

In the last 20 years the number of employee deaths per year has doubled to eight per 1,000 workers as a result of the HIV-AIDS epidemic, Roos said.

Around half the absenteeism at work was a result of AIDS-related illnesses.

International AIDS researchers say Eskom, Africa's biggest power utility, has one of the most generous AIDS prevention programmes and the most comprehensive research on the epidemic in South Africa.

Eskom, a state-owned company earmarked for privatisation, began investigating the impact of HIV-AIDS in 1985 -- at about the same time as mining companies like Implats and Gold Fields, they said.

But prevalence of the pandemic in the mining industry is much higher, estimated at 20 percent, mainly because it employs a higher proportion of unskilled workers.

Roos said a move to cut the number of Eskom staff from around 67,000 in 1989 -- reducing the amount of unskilled labour -- was a factor in its lower infection rate.

He said the performance bonuses of managers at Eskom were tied to AIDS-related training goals.

South African officials say business response to the pandemic has generally been inadequate.

A survey of 110 companies showed only 27 percent among the larger firms were assessing the impact of HIV-AIDS and incorporating it into their business plans, a study from the South African Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS has found. Nampa-Reuters

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