Y2K

 

SA MUST STEP UP PACE OF Y2K COMPLIANCE: MBEKI

CAPE TOWN August 19 1998 Sapa

 

 

Only 60 percent of South Africa's computer systems would be year 2000 compliant at the turn of the century if the current pace of correcting for the so-called "millennium bug" did not pick up, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki said on Wednesday.

 

Known as the Y2K (Year 2000) phenomena, the "bug" arises because of some computers' inability to process dates into the next century; many computer systems use two digits to store dates instead of four, and as a result will record the year 1999 as 99 and the year 2000 as 00, causing errors and ambiguities when the date is used in sorting, comparing or calculating data.

 

Speaking at the Castle in Cape Town at the launch of National Y2K Awareness Day - which marks just 500 days until the end of the century - Mbeki said that if the problem was not adequately dealt with, the country could have a disaster on its hands.

 

However, the good news was that South Africa was ranked as one of the top five countries in the world when it came to implementing systems to rectify the problem, Mbeki said.

 

Computer users were not the only people at risk; telephones, banks, water and electricity systems and other equipment which was controlled by microchips would also have to be Y2K compliant.

 

Post and Telecommunications Minister Jay Naidoo told the National Assembly during an interpellation later on Wednesday: "Government is generally on track to handle the Y2K millennium bug."

 

About 17,5 percent of the country's computer systems were currently Y2K compliant, and efforts to correct the problem had to be accelerated, he said.

 

Local authorities outside the metropolitan areas, as well as the country's 800,000 small and medium enterprises, were most at risk of being affected.

 

Insurance companies have said they will not cover Y2K-related problems and few manufacturers are willing to replace goods rendered obsolete.

 

It has been estimated the bug could cause world-wide losses amounting to US700 billion.

 

In South Africa it is estimated it will cost up to R25 billion to implement all the changes necessary to such equipment as municipal light switches, hospital lung machines, cellular telephones, air traffic control systems, and railways and mining equipment.

 

A year 2000 decision support centre has been established to create awareness about the problem and to give local businesses the knowledge and tools to deal with the bug.