Ekurhuleni load shedding: Mayor working with Eskom to ensure compliance

The City of Ekurhuleni is working with power utility, Eskom, to ensure it complies with requirements to implement load shedding, Mayor Mzwandile Masina says.

Masina said he had seen that Eskom had issued a statement saying the city must comply with load shedding schedules.

The mayor was speaking at the home of slain Gauteng Department of Human Settlements official, Teboho Makhoa on Monday.

Ekurhuleni Load shedding update

Masina explained that he had previously explained the capacity the metro was building over time.

The mayor said he had seen Eskom had issued a statement urging that the city conformed to load shedding schedules, adding that it was doing so.

“What I explained then is that the excess capacity that we have always had, we were distributing it to areas that are paying; firstly prioritising industrial sites, prioritising areas that are high paying to reduce the time lines,” the mayor said.

Fin24 reported on Thursday that Eskom said it would have to implement load shedding in the city’s licensed supply areas after the municipality failed, repeatedly, to do so.

Rectifying violations

Eskom said its efforts to ask the municipality to rectify violations of its agreement had “very little success”.

Masina added that the metro’s approach to load shedding schedules ensured that there weren’t protracted power cut offs.

“For instance, if the load shedding is for four hours we could pick up two hours and pass over the other two hours to the final consumer so in that way, you don’t experience a four hour-long [cut] service,” the mayor said. He added:

“But we are working with Eskom to ensure we comply with all the requirements”.

Revamping Ekurhuleni infrastructure

Masina said the city was also implementing a programme to revamp its infrastructure for water, energy, and bulk contribution so it could be able to cope with the challenges it faced.

Eskom said Ekurhuleni Metro requested it to implement power cuts in the city’s licensed supply areas as an interim measure and the two entities agreed to communicate this to the metro’s residents along with revised load shedding schedules, News24 reported.

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