Spare us the blackouts, healthcare sector, farmers plead
Eskom says it is beyond its powers
As the country sinks into darkness because of lack of electricity, farmers and public hospitals are pleading with Eskom to exempt them from loadshedding.
The Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) said load-shedding had negatively impacted the provision of quality care in all health facilities and placed an enormous strain on health workers to perform their duties.
HPCSA’s Prof Simon Nemutandani said healthcare workers in hospitals were unable to perform emergency surgeries timeously because of load-shedding and this had put the lives of the patients at risk.
“More than 80% of South Africans are reliant on public healthcare services and the implementation stages of loadshedding and the lack of a robust contingency plan has proved to be catastrophic in the healthcare environment, with varied and far-reaching consequences. There are approximately 420 state hospitals and more than 3,000 public clinics across the country.”
He said while private facilities and secondary- and tertiary-level public hospitals appeared to be well-equipped with generators, power supply interruptions placed critically ill patients dependent on lifesupport machines at risk.
“The performance and life span of medical equipment and devices are negatively affected by power interruptions. On the other hand, smaller healthcare facilities including primary healthcare clinics which are not equipped with generator banks are often left in the dark,” he said.
The Gauteng department of health has spent over R42m on running costs for fuel at its facilities, an amount that has tripled from previous years.
Eskom’s Sikhonathi Mantshantsha said: “The facilities that can be exempted from load-shedding are institutions that are critical to the production of electricity and that would be coal mines that provide Eskom with electricity, the seat of government and that is specifically the Union Buildings and parliament. No other place is exempted from load-shedding, not [even] the president’s house… If your place of residence or work is fed from the same line as a coal mine, you might feel lucky and important because you won’t be shed.”
He said hospitals were protected from load-shedding by their municipalities, which meant that their blackouts were only delayed until such time the hospitals generators are ready.
If a hospital’s is not ready, it must register with its local municipality to allow it to delay only for a few minutes.
“Eskom does not decide what rules it will follow. These are the regulations of the electricity regulator in SA and if they were to change, of course someone would have to make the application and Nersa [National Energy Regulator of SA] would have to hear the supplier, distributer as well as the public.”
Farmers in Gauteng also asked to be exempted as the quality of their crops was being negatively impacted.
Hydroponic farmer Zandile Kumalo, 30, who runs a 3,000m farm on the roof top of a shopping centre said her farm relied heavily on electricity. “A hydroponic farm relies highly on electricity and water as the crops are not in soil, but are growing in the water. So for us to keep up with the irrigation needs of our plants, our pump needs electricity.
“I have to spend R3,000 extra per month on a generator. This would mean I would have to take from my salary to compensate for the loss and make sure I pay staffers and keep the business running. We need to produce food, but we also need to protect livelihoods. So being exempted would allow us to do this,” she said.
KwaZulu-Natal farmer, Nkanyiso Ngubane, 37, said her 60ha farm was starting to produce low-quality crops as load-shedding was affecting hourly irrigation schedules.
“We are considering solar panels as an alternative energy supply, but we cannot afford it at the moment. It would cost us about R200,000 to get it and that on its own is extra expenditure,” she said.
“The lack of regular irrigation causes the quality of the crop to be poor and this means the crop might be degraded, resulting in us generating less money.”