Johnathan Paoli
Power utility, Eskom, has announced its decision to shift the country to Stage 5 load shedding from Sunday at 16:00 until Monday at 05:00.
The utility plans on subsequently reducing load-shedding to Stage 4 until 16:00 before ramping back up to Stage 5 on Monday evening and Tuesday morning.
Eskom’s announcement of Stage 5 Load Shedding follows on the heels of the ANC’s 2019 Manifesto rally in Soweto in which President Cyril Ramaphosa highlighted the dire straits of the country and the need to fight and defeat load shedding.
Whilst praising the achievements of the ANC over the last three decades, Ramaphosa remained vague concerning practical and definitive plans regarding how to solve the country’s power crisis.
Eskom said the reason for the intensified load-shedding was increased planned maintenance, from an average of 3,000MW in June to an average of 6,000 MW in September, as well as the recent failures of multiple generating units.
Eskom said that during the weekend, a generating unit at Duvha, Hendrina, Tutuka and two generating units at Kendal power stations were taken offline for repairs, as well as delays in returning to service a generating unit at Kendal and Tutuka power stations
In addition, the utility said that an increased load shedding schedule was necessary to recover emergency generation.
Similarly, ANC Youth League President Collen Malatje berated the Minister of Electricity for failing to effectively counter loadshedding
“The Minister of Electricity must be the Minister of Electricity and not the minister of load shedding,” Malatje quipped.
Ironically the rally was marred by power interruptions with the electricity being restored just before the presidential address.
But Ramaphosa was on a defensive mode and said load shedding started in 1998 when Eskom wanted to build new power stations.
He said bad decisions were taken and the government now has a deeper understanding where the real challenges are, and are correcting them.
“The people are seeing the steps being taken to address all these challenges. The minister of electricity has been doing an excellent job, and working together with the Minister of Public Enterprises and Minister of Energy have been working well to fix our electricity challenges. Load Shedding has a negative impact on the economy and by the time of going to the elections in 2024 load shedding will be a thing of the past,” Ramaphosa said.
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