Load shedding moves down a stage
Load shedding moves down a stage. Image Credit: SANews

Home » SA Plunged into Stage 4 Load Shedding! Time for Eskom to be Declared State of Disaster?

SA Plunged into Stage 4 Load Shedding! Time for Eskom to be Declared State of Disaster?

As Eskom today escalated load shedding in South Africa from Stage 2 to Stage 4 – due to a trip at the Majuba and Tutuka power stations – there are calls for Eskom to be declared a State of Disaster. (Last night a national state of disaster was announced to handle the catastrophic floods in […]

By SAPeople Contributor
19-04-22 15:22
in Business
Load shedding moves down a stage
Load shedding moves down a stage. Image Credit: SANews

As Eskom today escalated load shedding in South Africa from Stage 2 to Stage 4 – due to a trip at the Majuba and Tutuka power stations – there are calls for Eskom to be declared a State of Disaster. (Last night a national state of disaster was announced to handle the catastrophic floods in parts of SA.)

Today the DA said: “Eskom has proved beyond any doubt that it is not able to solve SA’s 14-year-old loadshedding crisis. The entity’s old generation fleet is on life support!”

Eskom announced this morning that it has been forced to implement Stage 4 load shedding from 07h20 Tuesday morning until 05h00 Friday morning, as it works to return units to service.

The power utility had resumed load shedding on Sunday afternoon, at Stage 2, following additional generation unit losses and the delayed return to service of other generators.

“Now that 17GW of unplanned outages and a further 5GW offline for planned maintenance has been announced – amounting to a third of Eskom generation capacity – the country is in a state of disaster, driven by Eskom’s ongoing failures,” MP Ghaleb Cachalia – DA Shadow Minister of Public Enterprises said in a statement on Tuesday.

Cachalia said: “Last week the DA wrote to the Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, and the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe, requesting that they motivate for a Cabinet resolution that addresses impending disaster looming in the country’s electricity sector, almost exclusively under the failing aegis of Eskom.”

The DA warned the Ministers that Eskom has “proved beyond any doubt that it is not able to solve South Africa’s 14 year old loadshedding crisis. The entity’s old generation fleet is on life support and is constantly tripping, resulting in power outages being announced at short and debilitating notice.”

Cachalia said: “It is now high time that our demands are addressed. The dire situation in KwaZulu-Natal is being compounded by electricity supply issues which affect the ability, inter alia, to pump much needed water supplies. People are dying, businesses will die, ports are closed and the country will grind to a halt.

“Do we need to wait before this failure engulfs the entire country?

“The DA demands that Cabinet addresses this forthwith and that the situation at Eskom is dealt with urgently by way of the declaration of a State of Disaster at Eskom as a prelude to a commission of inquiry into our generation of electricity.”

Tags: DA Eskom load shedding Loadshedding Stage 4 national state of disaster