Electricity Minister, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, says stage 6 load shedding cannot be a norm.
The Minister used his Monday media briefing to apologise to citizens for stage 6 load shedding, which had South Africans fuming last week.
The embattled power utility, Eskom, plunged the country into more than 10 hours of load shedding daily due increased demand and the depletion of emergency reserves.
Ramokgopa apologised to the public for the intensive power cuts in what seemed to be the coldest week of the year.
He says while they were able to sustain a relatively healthy performance of the units over the past 21 days, the grid did experience a significant reduction in the available capacity starting on Thursday.
“We had to take measures that are meant to protect the grid and we went to stage 6 load shedding, so I want to express our most sincere and profuse apology for having taken you through a very difficult stage of intensive load-shedding,” says Ramokgopa.
The Electricity Minister says load-shedding remains unacceptable and it disrupts lives.
“The intensity of load shedding that goes beyond stage 4 is something that should become unacceptable.”
He also announced that 126 people have been arrested for various crimes at Eskom since April 2022.
He says 2147 cases have been reported to the SAPS, and 1 586 of those are under investigation.
“In addition to the technical solutions that we are seeking to resolve the issues at Eskom, we are also focused on addressing some of the underlying problems which have been fraud, corruption and issues of security.”
ANC Secretary General, Fikile Mbalula, says South Africa has a greater chance of ending load shedding by December.
The best apology is No load shedding at all. Please and thank you https://t.co/EtBERIyzor
— Gift Makoti (@Gift_Makoti_) July 17, 2023
this load shedding 😩
I’m cooking dinner at this time bethuna.— eYuh (@sayminnie_) July 17, 2023
Government is literally playing with people lives. Loadshedding it's not acceptable at all and now putting minister who doesn't know the basics of how it started it's just a null. What the hell is minister of electricity? Tomorrow we will have minister of shoes
— Sello (@S7K30SZee) July 17, 2023
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