Govt apologises for ‘devastating’ load shedding

The government yesterday apologised to consumers after a prolonged energy crisis took a turn for the worse, with beleaguered utility Eskom forced to ramp up power cuts nationwide.

The power utility had to delay a planned maintenance outage at a nuclear power station yesterday “to get some time to stabilise the system”, a day after it announced further blackouts due to breakdowns at other plants.

“We apologise to the country about the impact and disruptions,” Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said in a statement yesterday.

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“Power cuts are having a devastating effect on households and livelihoods, investment and economic climate. This is totally unacceptable,” he said.

Scheduled blackouts have burdened Africa’s most industrialised economy for years, with Eskom failing to keep pace with demand and maintain its ageing coal power infrastructure. The outages reached new extremes this year.

On Wednesday, Eskom said it had to ramp up load shedding. This meant South Africans experienced multiple cuts, each lasting between two and four hours, on a rotational basis for up to about 11 hours a day.

Last month, Eskom, which is struggling under a R400 billion debt, said it had run out of funds to buy diesel.

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The Democratic Alliance said the risk of a national blackout due to system failure was growing and urged the government to issue a contingency plan.