Cape Town – Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says Eskom will engage with anyone in its efforts to end load shedding.
This comes after acting Eskom CEO Calib Cassim warned of stage 8 load shedding this winter, as he indicated severe electricity shortages.
Cassim said if unplanned outages reached 18 000 MW, stage 8 load shedding would become highly likely.
According to TimesLIVE, Ramokgopa said government would meet with anyone to end power cuts.
Ramokgopa visited the Kusile Power Station in Mpumalanga on Monday to assess progress on bringing four units back online by December.
Despite facing criticism on social media for his visits to Toyota, Nissan, and Zulu King Misuzulu kaZwelithini, Ramokgopa expressed a willingness to meet with anyone in order to end load-shedding.
“We will meet any and everyone to end load-shedding. It will be irresponsible of me to declare there will be no stage 8,” the report quoted Ramokgopa as saying.
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The report said although the minister couldn’t rule out higher levels of power cuts in winter, he said: “We are doing everything possible to ensure we don’t go to higher stages of load-shedding.”
Ramokgopa said Eskom was having “sleepless nights” trying to end load shedding, adding that it was, however, important to share the progress that has been made thus far, News24, reported.
“We are working very hard, we are burning the diesel. The team is having sleepless nights to make sure that we improve the energy availability factor. We are doing everything possible to ensure that we don’t go to higher stages of load shedding,” Ramokgopa said.
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Compiled by Olwethu Mpeshe
