Eskom gives flood-stricken Johannesburg break from load-shedding
Eskom says it has granted City Power some reprieve from load-shedding in large areas in Johannesburg that experienced a significant loss of electricity.
“The reprieve follows the utility’s request for areas that were severely affected by the recent floods and storms, which resulted in loss of electricity, to be excluded from load-shedding,” Eskom stated.
“Through collaboration between the two entities and in accordance with the National Energy Regulator of South Africa regulations, Eskom was able to assist the City during this period.”
Eskom’s concession comes after the City of Joburg sent an urgent request to the power utility on Monday, 12 December 2022.
It asked to be exempted from load-shedding for three days to deal with the crisis caused by flooding due to heavy rains.
Johannesburg mayor Mpho Phalatse said the city’s challenges were “near insurmountable”, with escalating faults and outages.
“While progress is being made with limited resources in addressing the thousands of outages that have occurred since last week’s inclement weather and flooding, continuous rainfall means more faults are being logged every hour,” Johannesburg said in a statement.
“Given the urgent need for City Power to attend to the widespread and escalating faults, the entity has expressed its concern that load-shedding is not only causing additional faults and stress on the network, but also preventing the entity from being able to effectively attend to the outages and to stabilise the situation.”
Areas hardest hit include the larger Roodepoort, Hursthill, Northcliff and Lenasia, where infrastructure was severely damaged by flooding.
“Operators continue to work tirelessly as all available technical skills have been deployed,” the city said.
“While we are full-out in doing our utmost best to restore the outages and the city’s councillors are doing their best to assist the residents, thugs see our technicians as easy targets.”
On Sunday, four City Power technicians were held at gunpoint, assaulted, and robbed by six men in Jeppestown while in full view of community members standing by.
It said threats and intimidation of technicians are being reported daily.
Eskom is currently load shedding at stage 4 after reducing rotational power cuts from stage 5 on Thursday morning at 05:00.
It hopes to further reduce load-shedding to stage 3 from 05:00 on Sunday.
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