The executive mayor of Ngwathe local municipality, Ms M.J. Mochela, this week extended a word of gratitude and appre-ciation to Parys and Tumahole residents for their patience during the extended electricity outage from the night of Tuesday, 26 May to Friday, 29 May.
After a debriefing session with senior management, Mochela resolved and instructed that a comprehensive newsletter should be sent out to account for and provide an explanation to the community on the reasons for the outage.
It should also say what is being done to prevent a recurrence and provide reliable, uninterrupted electricity to communities during the winter season and going forward.
This newsletter will be an insert in the Parys Gazette and will also be distributed to the entire Parys community, the municipality said.
The following information is an extract from the formal newsletter
“Eskom is contracted to supply 21 MW to Parys/Tumahole.
Eskom’s available infrastructure is 40 MW (2×20) MW transformers. However, one of these is not functional and out of commission.
For Eskom to be able to supply the necessary NMD until they fix the other 20 MW transformer, they will have to exceed the capacity of the functioning transformer.
Our electricity demand during winter is 24.5 MW, meaning we exceed our contracted supply of 21 MW by 3.5 MW.
To prevent power outage, Eskom must be willing to increase our contracted supply to 24.5 MW.
The current challenge is that Eskom has now retracted from their willingness to increase our capacity, based on the past debt the municipality incurred due to unfavourable financial priorities.
The role and responsibilities of the municipality and progress thus far include the turnaround strategy, especially focusing on financial sustainability. It also includes a payment arrangement with Eskom and audit and faulty meter replacement.
Finally, the community’s role/involvement/contribution in helping with the following: Technical and other losses, ghost vending, bypassing, vandalism and theft.”
– Issued by Ngwathe Communi-cation Unit.
