Africa-Press – South-Africa. After admitting that it is difficult to stay optimistic, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said there are measures under way to stop load shedding.
Magwenya briefed the media on Sunday afternoon, shortly after Eskom announced that Stage 5 load shedding was on the cards for the coming week.
“I think the president has been quite open about accepting the devastating nature of load shedding, not only to households but to businesses, to the economy and to jobs,” said Magwenya.
He said so far this year, there have been about 162 days with power cuts, making it the worst year in terms of load shedding.
“It will take time for Eskom to return generation units at Kusile and other power stations to service, and for new sources of capacity, including from private generators, to come online.
“As I have stated, for households and businesses that have been so badly affected by the intermittent power supply, the prospect of more load shedding is deeply disheartening.”
He said:
He said that Ramaphosa had announced measures in July this year to prevent load shedding by improving the performance of Eskom’s power stations and adding new generation capacity to the grid in the fastest possible time.
The National Energy Crisis Committee oversaw these measures over the past three months.
He said Eskom was recruiting skilled personnel, including senior former plant managers and engineers from the private sector. To date, 18 skilled professionals had been brought back to Eskom, where they would work closely with permanent Eskom teams to transfer their skills.
Furthermore, the police had set up a special unit to tackle sabotage, theft and corruption at Eskom.
There are currently 67 cases in court, of which three have been finalised with convictions.
“Just this week, a contractor working at the Camden power station was arrested for an incident of sabotage aimed at securing more maintenance and repair jobs for his company,” said Magwenya.
Magwenya added that the new Eskom board had formed a committee to improve plant performance.
“These and other measures will stabilise the performance of the existing fleet and lead to an improvement of the reliability for the coming months,” he said.
For More News And Analysis About South-Africa Follow Africa-Press
