Various households are still without power this morning as a result of industrial action currently effecting Eskom.
And the communication to municipalities from Eskom leave a lot to be desired. This according to the City of Johannesburg’s MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services, Nico de Jager.
De Jager said that despite the City receiving communication that the parastatal was able to continue meeting the demand for power generation yesterday evening, 14 June, a number of Johannesburg communities, and those in other municipalities, were left without light due to a widespread power failure.
“Effective communication of power failures and the need for load shedding was only communicated late [yesterday],” he said.
The City was left unable to make the required plans to mitigate the impact on residents, De Jager continued.
“We urge all our customers to use electricity sparingly and to treat all installations as live to prevent unsafe incidents.”
City Power later announced that Joburgers might have to endure stage-2 load shedding. The entity encouraged residents to look at the load shedding timetable on City Power’s website to see if their area would be affected.
Load shedding was then immediately set for 8pm last night, but City Power later announced that it was cancelled. However, residents continue to report power outages this morning, 15 June, some reporting that they have been without power for more than 24 hours.
De Jager said that ultimately, Eskom has a lot to answer for to municipalities across the country for the inadequate communication, the failure in their contingency measures and their inability to adequately foresee this failure.
City Power later released a statement warning residents that Eskom issues a statement yesterday that the generation and distribution of electricity across Eskom’s network is constrained.
This, Eskom said, was due to the acts of sabotage and intimidation. Today, coal deliveries by rail deliveries and conveyor belts reportedly still continue to operate, albeit at limited capacity.
In the statement Eskom also said it will continue to provide regular updates about the state of the power system through various media platforms.
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