Staff Reporter.
Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter on Thursday has apologised to South Africans for the continued power cuts.
“I apologise to the nation for the hardship that we continue to inflict as a result of load shedding. But bear with us, we are working on this and of course, as a whole, South Africa is also procuring additional capacity, which we are in dire need of,” De Ruyter said.
Since Tuesday Eskom has been implementing stage two load shedding due to breakdowns of generating units at its aging fleet of coal-fired power stations.
De Ruyter said Eskom was struggling with additional generation capacity due to its old power stations.
He said while they caught up on maintenance, load shedding would remain a reality for a number of years until the final unit at Kusile power station comes online by the end of 2023.
“I think capacity will remain constrained while we catch up on maintenance and while we add new capacity. That’s the hard reality I think we face, “he said.
“My chief operating officer and I are pushing the organisation as hard as we can. People are working extraordinary hours to bring units back.
“But we simply cannot perform miracles overnight.”
Asked whether load shedding was due to Eskom’s lack of maintenance or poor management, De Ruyter said it was a combination of things causing power cuts.
“I think it’s a bit of all of the above, to be frank. I think what we have seen is that load shedding has regrettably now been with South Africans for the past 15 years. So this is not a new phenomenon. We have been working hard catching up on maintenance that had been deferred and postponed.
“When I assumed my role in January last year, we communicated that during this so-called reliability maintenance recovery programme, there would be an increase in the risk of load shedding while we do this maintenance.”
The power utility has implemented stage two load shedding this week until Friday, while unscheduled power cuts have made the situation worse as power in many parts of the country regularly does not return at the end of each scheduled cut.
Meanwhile Eskom said wage talks between unions and the state-owned entity have collapsed on Wednesday.
The utility said it had declared a dispute because it was not able to reach an agreement at the central bargaining forum with the three unions.
Numsa, the NUM and Solidarity were demanding a 15% wage increase, however, Eskom said its final offer was 1.5%.