“When stage 6 load shedding was implemented in December, not all municipalities has published their extended load shedding schedules” said Eskom in a statement.
The president Cyril Ramaphosa, who cut short a visit to Egypt to deal with the crisis, said that Eskom would have to work to stabilize the power grid by the end of March 2020 and added that suspected sabotage at power stations contributed to the loss of 2000 MW this week.
The public enterprises and energy ministers would proposals to cabinet aimed at closing South Africa’s energy gap. They include fast-tracking applications of businesses seeking to generate their own electricity said Cyril Ramaphosa, he added without elaborating that “they are certain people withing the system who take it upon themselves to go and switch off certain instruments that finally lead to us losing so many megawatts.
Speaking about stage 8 load shedding; “The likelihood of reaching stage 8 is low” said Eskom and the highest level of power cuts Eskom has yet implemented is stage 6 which means stage 8 load shedding is erroneous and incorrect.
Eskom wants 1.8bn in bonuses while load shedding kicks in again
Nomfundo Maseti, the acting full time member of National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) does not mince her words about the public having to pay for the maladministration and incompetence at Eskom as it came to NERSA’ s attention that Eskom plans to pay bonuses totaling R1.8billion between last year and 2022. NERSA refused to allow additional tariff increases for the payment of bonuses, but Eskom is challenging NERSA’ s decisions in court.
This is due to lack of paying performance bonuses last year by Eskom, but, after strike action, it agreed to pay more than 30 000 workers a “once-off payment” of R10,000 after tax which represents the wage increases of 7,5% a year for three years. This was despite Eskom’s qualified audit and widespread at the power utility.