This was revealed in a reply to a parliamentary question asked by DA Member of Parliament Michael Waters.
It indicates below how many electricity outages there were for each month for the first eight months of 2014.
- January: 189
- February: 140
- March: 213
- April: 173
- May: 146
- June: 186
- July: 177
- August: 151
The total is 1 375 outages for the first eight months.
“While I did ask the reasons for each outage, the reply merely stated that, ‘The reasons for these outages are currently being established’,” says Waters.
He says the frustration these outages place on families is unacceptable with many not being able to bath and cook food, while business suffer due to lost productivity which has a potential for job losses.
One of the responsibilities of the metro is to ensure a constant and reliable supply of electricity to the residents and businesses.
Themba Gadebe, spokesperson for the metro, says the metro has not been paralyzed by power outages.
“The Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM) has a huge electricity grid by any standards and outages occur as a result of numerous,” he says.
The metro manages outages responsibly by recording all outages and their duration by analyzing the causes of the outages and then responding to these causes through the application of resources.
The latest outbreak of load-shedding is due to the central coal silo collapsing at the Majuba power station in Mpumalanga.
The silo is 40m high and gave 2 250 tonnes of coal per hour to the station.
The silo’s walls cracked and collapsed on Saturday afternoon.
This has brought 10% of Eskom’s generating capacity to a standstill for an unknown amount of time.
