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Ailing power utility Eskom has also joined in on the Black Friday frenzy offering some “luminous” load shedding specials, albeit with no certainty that the relaxation of the deliberate power cuts would last until Cyber Monday.
The parastatal on Friday announced that consumers will get some reprieve as they recover from the shock of another 75-basis point increase in the repo rate announced by the Reserve Bank on Thursday.
Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said there will be some discounts on load shedding on Black Friday.
“Load shedding will be maintained at stage 2 continuously until further notice. There will be no stage 3 load shedding during the evenings, as had been previously communicated.”
The special comes after Eskom announced Thursday that it would reduce daily load shedding between 4pm and 5pm from stage 4 to stage 3 after it received much needed diesel supplies from PetroSA.
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The diesel supply comes after Eskom on Sunday said that it had run out of cash to buy diesel and does not plan to order any more until 1 April 2023.
Following that news, Pravin Gordhan said government was looking at solutions to Eskom’s diesel challenges following discussions with Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana and National Treasury.
“We have taken steps to find funding. Firstly, as a matter of urgency, the Minister of Finance and myself talked on Sunday evening about where money could be found. Secondly, there was a meeting between my delegation and the Minister of Finance’s delegation [where we talked] about the challenges Eskom faced.”
Eskom blew its diesel budget seven months into its current financial year
Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer warned that the utility was now in a “difficult position” where it was forced to implement load shedding, as it did not “have the money to burn diesel at the rate [it] has been doing up to now”.
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