Pretoria – Services at the Department of Home Affairs including the issuing of smart identity cards, passports and temporary identity cards cannot be processed due to power failure at an office in Pretoria.
“The Department of Home Affairs would like to inform citizens and clients that it has experienced a power failure at its back-office in Pretoria. All applications that are live capture like smart ID Cards and passports cannot be issued without first being cleared in this back-office,” said Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi’s spokesperson Siya Qoza.
He said the back-office has a generator and four uninterrupted power supplies (UPS) which work as back-up.
“Unfortunately, the power damage also affected the UPS when the generator tried to kick off. This will mean that all Home Affairs offices in the country are unable to issue Smart ID Cards, passports and temporary identity certificates,” Qoza said.
The only services that are not affected and will continue being offered are birth, marriage and death services.
“Technicians are working around the clock to ensure that services are speedily restored. We are hoping that they may be restored by tomorrow (Wednesday). The department apologises to clients and appeals for their patience,” he said.
On Tuesday, power utility Eskom announced that stage 4 load shedding would continue until 5am on Thursday.
The power utility said this was due to the “sudden loss” of three Kendal Power Station generating units on Tuesday morning.
Load shedding would thereafter be reduced to state 2 until midnight on Friday.
Explaining the reason for the sudden change in the schedule, Eskom said in the early hours of Tuesday morning a conveyor belt feeding coal into Kendal Power Station, failed.
“To conserve coal, the power output of the generators was reduced, but this required fuel oil to be used to sustain the boiler combustion.
“Subsequently, the fuel oil plant supplying the units experienced a failure and shut down.
“This resulted in the trip of the three generating units.”
According to Eskom it was anticipated that the Kendal units would be returned to service by the weekend.
IOL