Get ready South Africa, load shedding isn’t going anywhere

Durban – Load shedding is likely to continue for a while as challenges such as corruption in Eskom’s two main power plants, Kusile and Medupi, have hampered electricity supplies, Public Enterprise Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Friday.

“The hope was that Medupi and Kusile would give us over 9,000 megawatts together, and I think you all know these projects didn’t come out right,” he said.

“There were construction errors, there were construction errors, there were building strikes. There were massive time and cost overruns and of course there was corruption, ”said Gordhan.

“Some people are on trial right now, and more people are likely to end up in court for their role in that regard. These two plants are not as effective as they should be and Kusile has three units in operation, but there are three more units that will be operational over the next three years. “

Gordhan spoke with industry experts during a virtual event to review the state of state-owned companies in the country ahead of the local elections on the 1st Mining and Energy Sector.

One of the participants had asked Gordhan, who oversees companies like Eskom, Denel and SAA, to name a few whether or not load shedding will stay here.

The 72-year-old Durban-born politician replied that the ANC has to admit that he wasn’t two steps ahead of the game and that he could have done better over the past 20 years.

Three days before the elections of South Africans for the local elections in 2021, the country has in the week before the 1st.

Eskom issued a statement that load shedding will be suspended from Friday evening at 8 p.m. as generating capacity has been restored and three generating units have been brought back into operation in the last 24 hours.

“The total outages amount to 14,618 MW, while the planned maintenance has a capacity of 4,855 MW. Eskom would like to remind customers and the public that load shedding is implemented as a last resort to maintain the stability of the power system, ”said Eskom.

Another participant had asked the minister about the condition of the ailing airline South African Airways (SAA). Gordhan said he couldn’t talk about it that much and said, “I don’t want to go into details, but not everything you hear necessarily coincides with what is happening. That’s why I’m formulating it very diplomatically at the moment. “

Gordhan also reiterated former President Thabo Mbeki’s views on government-private sector relations last night, but said the government is far behind in implementing programs, but sometimes the social partners fail to “get to the party”.

Mbeki addressed businessmen and academics at the Durban ICC last night as part of the ANC’s election campaign.

“I think from the government’s point of view we go pretty far to implement what we are committed to, but we find that our social partners do not always come to the party,” he added.

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