Joburg residents warned to be vigilant as load shedding kicks in

The Environment and Infrastructure Services Department (EISD) has warned the residents of Johannesburg to be vigilant as load shedding returns to keep South Africans in the dark.

Eskom announced that it will be cutting the lights with stage 2 load shedding from 4pm until 10pm from Tuesday night.

The power utility said thereafter, stage 2 load shedding will be implemented daily from 5am to 10pm until Saturday night.

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The dark lords of Megawatt Park blamed the power cuts on a shortage of generation capacity after breakdowns and delays in returning some generating units to service.

MMC for EISD in the city of Johannesburg, Michael Sun, said load shedding is not only about being in the dark due to blackouts.

“It is the exact time cable thieves strike and our infrastructure becomes vulnerable to outages.”

“Not only does load shedding provide a handy schedule to the thugs that steal our cables and other equipment without the risk of electrocution, but City Power infrastructure wasn’t designed to be constantly powered up and powered down. The whole process makes the system more susceptible to faults,” Sun said.

The EISD has appealed to residents to try prevent cable theft before it happens by reporting any suspicious behaviour in their neighbourhoods during load shedding.

Residents have also been requested to be patient as City Power technicians restore power to existing outages and any caused by loads shedding

Sun said City Power technicians cannot work on the network during load shedding.

“This is the unfortunate reality we have to live with during blackouts. But there is hope as the city will in coming weeks be launching the framework for the procurement of energy from Independent Power Producers which will be key in ending Johannesburg’s dependence on Eskom and lessening the impact of load shedding.”

City power has also urged residents to use  electricity as sparingly as possible before and after blackouts to prevent overloads on the network.

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