City Power excludes some hospitals from load shedding

City Power has announced that it has started excluding certain hospitals and clinics from load shedding because of the pressures and challenges the health facilities go through during the deliberate power cuts.

Spokesperson Isaac Mangena said City Power was approached by the Department of Health to consider ways to exempt its facilities from load shedding because of the critical nature of the service they render to the residents.

“While we are committed as City Power to ensure there is minimal to no disruptions to the essential services such as clinics and hospitals, it is difficult to exclude all of them from load shedding. From the list we received there are over 130 health facilities including clinics and hospitals within the City of Joburg.”

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Hospitals exempt from load shedding

Mangena said based on the assessments of their network, it is only able to exempt about 10 facilities, for now, in the city’s supply network.

“The reason is because of our network configurations and the fact that most of these facilities are embedded within the network blocks, and we have limited resources that could be used to operate, often physically, during load shedding.”

“Those we managed to exempt include Parkhurst Municipal Clinic, Johannesburg Eye Hospital, Coronation Hospital, and Helen Joseph Hospital,” Mangena said.

Mangena said City Power will assess its network layout to see if it is able to exempt more of the health facilities.

Load shedding due to diesel shortage

On Wednesday, Eskom announced that due to the shortage of diesel, load shedding would remain at stage 4 throughout the night and continue until diesel stocks are replenished.

The power utility had earlier announced that load shedding would be staggered between stage 3 and stage 4 levels at least until the weekend.

“The vessel that is supposed to offload diesel at Mossel Bay cannot berth due to rough seas. Eskom has to, therefore, preserve the low diesel levels at Gourikwa, while delivery to Ankerlig will take time to replenish as it is done by road tankers,” Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said.

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