BUSINESS OF ESKOM

BLACKOUTS ‘SPELL REAL TROUBLE’

PUBLIC Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan’s admission that he is unable to say when rotational blackouts will end is a clear indication of the trouble in which South Africa finds itself, trade union the United Association of South Africa (UASA) said on Wednesday. UASA spokesperson Stanford Mazhindu said micro businesses were hit the hardest, as many could not afford generators. Micro and medium-sized employers would soon be unable to afford to pay staff and more South Africans would be unemployed. “Of course, there is no magic formula, as Gordhan mentioned in his media briefing on Tuesday morning, but we as a nation, and more specifically UASA, had hoped that the crisis would be solved earlier than the 10 to 14 days Gordhan said it might take to get a better grasp of the system,” Mazhindu said in a statement. “There is now talk of implementing stage 5 and 6 load shedding. Clearly, the power utility has no idea how to resolve its issues. Gordhan and Eskom need to develop a clear idea of what is needed to resolve the crisis before it is too late.” He said it was almost unthinkable that the knowledge base at Eskom has deteriorated to such an extent that a technical review task team had to be appointed to examine plant unavailability due to scheduled maintenance, plant unavailability due to unplanned outages and unscheduled maintenance, operator errors resulting in power plants tripping and shutting down, and technical-and operator-associated inefficiencies resulting in lower-than-optimum electricity output. | African News Agency (ANA)