Africa-Press – South-Africa. Eskom has returned control of load shedding back to the City of Ekurhuleni (CoE) less than a week after it took over when the municipality failed to implement power cuts.
Eskom said on Friday that the CoE committed to implementing load shedding, and that it had “put controls in place to address the challenges” that prevented it from doing the planned power cuts.
“Eskom will continue to monitor the CoE and other municipalities to ensure that they implement load shedding accordingly. Eskom will take over the load shedding of any municipality that fails to comply for whatever reason, even after it has been engaged on the matter, as was the case with Ekurhuleni,” Eskom said.
“The power utility is obliged to take the necessary precautions to protect the integrity and stability of the grid.”
Eskom announced on Wednesday that it had taken control. It had previously taken over some of the role and left the municipality to load shed substations that had “critical loads”. It later handed back all load shedding after the municipality asked to assume responsibility again.
The CoE, however, failed to implement the cuts, which necessitated Eskom stepping in again.
CoE spokesperson Zweli Dlamini said at the time that the city would ask Eskom to not to shed some “critical substations in areas with a high concentration of large industries, because this will not only impact the economy of the region but also threaten jobs”.
“We are an economic hub and therefore, we are looking forward to positive engagements with the power utility, bearing in mind the valuable contribution of industry to the economy,” Dlamini said.
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