BETHAL – While residents of Bethal, eMzinoni and eMbalenhle are still left in the dark and have to experience load shedding daily, the issue of Bethal’s load shedding was discussed at a special Gert Sibande District council meeting last week.
Mr Themba Mlotshwa, DA councillor and representative at Gert Sibande District Municipality and deputy chairman of the DA in Mpumalanga, sent out a message that the district is prepared to help the municipality in paying some of its debt to Eskom, but only if Govan Mbeki Municipality sticks to the payment arrangements they had made with Eskom in the past.
If the GMM pays an amount to Eskom, the district municipality will also pay a certain share of that debt directly to Eskom.
The message further read that it is difficult to be on lockdown without electricity and water – a fact that has been made abundantly clear by the DA councillors.
The Ridge Times tried to contact the district municipality, but the phones just rang.
Bethal residents experienced load shedding, because Eskom’s transformers are set to a maximum demand for the municipality, and if the maximum demand of power supply is exceeded, load shedding kicks in.
Ms Mariaan Chamberlain, DA councillor, recently said the transformer of Eskom will trip if the demand for electricity exceeds that for which the municipality had applied and paid.
Govan Mbeki Municipality made a request to Eskom on 8 April to develop a technical turnaround strategy on electricity supply for Bethal, eMzinoni and eMbalenhle, but Eskom said no.
The municipality asked Eskom to increase the NMD of Bethal with 54 per cent, eMzinoni with 12.5 per cent and eMbalenhle with 8.8 per cent.
However, Eskom said the guiding principles approved by the Eskom Exco on relief of NMD during the lockdown period, only apply to customers in good standing and paid up accounts prior to the lockdown period.
In their answer to Govan Mbeki Municipality, Eskom further said the municipality has been consistently failing to pay its monthly accounts prior to the lockdown period and that the municipality has been in breach of the Electricity Supply Agreement (ESA). The relief requested can thus not be directly linked to the lockdown period.
The press release from Gert Sibande District Municipality further reads that the request to Eskom to increase the NMD in Bethal and eMzinoni, needs to be motivated by a technical plan of turning around the electricity supply system.
From a business point of view, it would be difficult to make Eskom understand why they should allow GMM to increase the NMD when GMM cannot account for the existing debt.
Note should be taken that on average the requested NMD would be an additional load of 25 per cent.
The average monthly account is likely to increase by a reasonable percentage depending on various factors, such as the tariff structures, among others.
The total losses on electricity supply are at an average of 55 per cent as per the report by the chief financial officer.
The technical losses are assumed to be five per cent of the 55 per cent considering the norm on a fairly maintained electrical infrastructure.
This is likely to be more because of poor planned maintenance being done on major equipment such as power transformers.
The non-technical losses are therefore assumed to be 50 per cent.
This could mean that 12.5 per cent of the additional load requested would not be accounted for from day one when it is made available.
A Bethal resident, Ms Maryke Claassen, began an online petition for residents to sign.
Within an hour, more than a thousand people had already signed the petition.
Ms Claassen closed the petition on Monday morning with 3 000 signatures and sent it to the premier and employees of Govan Mbeki Municipality, Gert Sibande District Municipality and Cogta.
Bethal residents experienced nearly five hours of load shedding on Sunday, 10 May.
“When the power did come back on, it stayed on for about 20 minutes and then went off again,” said a resident.
“It came on and off about four times before it finally came on.
“Some of our electrical appliances are damaged and sometimes the voltage is so low that I in anyway cannot even use my microwave.”
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