Cape Town - The Mother City’s mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis, has criticised the last minute notice for load shedding by Eskom after the power utility was granted a 9.61% electricity price hike last week.
“Just a week after Eskom has been granted another 9.61% price increase which no one can afford and which is totally unfair, Eskom has again announced that our country is going back into Stage 2 load shedding,” Hill-Lewis said on Monday.
Moments after Eskom announced load shedding from 9pm on Monday, it was changed to 5pm after “Medupi Unit 3 broke down a short while ago,” the power utility said in its updated statement.
Hill-Lewis slammed Eskom for continuously halting South Africa’s economy.
“This is because Eskom continues to be the biggest handbrake on our economy and our country, in the form of load shedding and insecure electricity supply,” he continues.
Hill-Lewis said the economy could not grow and alleviate poverty when prices continued to increase and electricity availability continued to decrease.
The mayor said this was the reason why the City of Cape Town was going ahead to reduce reliance on Eskom.
“That is why the City of Cape Town is working so hard to put that handbrake down permanently by reducing our reliance on Eskom and increasing the amount of IPPs - Independent Power Produces - that we buy from so we can secure electricity supply for Cape Town,” Hill-Lewis concludes.
Stage 2 load shedding is set to begin from 5pm on Monday, until 5am on Tuesday.
And then repeated again from 9pm on Tuesday until 5am on Wednesday.
Eskom said generation units were expected to return to service in 24 hours, however load shedding could continue at short notice if there were more significant breakdowns.
Last week, National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) awarded Eskom less than half of its increase it applied for.
Bringing a proposed 20.5% increase down to 9.61%.
The new price increase is expected to be effective from April 1.
IOL