Cape Town — Minister of Electrcity Kgotsientsho Ramokgopa has said the city of Johannesburg will not receive special treatment when it comes to load shedding during the BRICS Summit.
Ramokgopa was speaking at a media briefing on Sunday and said Eskom had received no special instructions to pause power cuts in Johannesburg during the summit, News24 said.
“Johannesburg will be expected – if there is load shedding on the day – to make its contribution to ensuring we protect the grid. How they allocate that – they will make that determination.”
“So, if you happen not to see load shedding it might be two things. One – we don’t have load shedding across Eskom or, if there is no load shedding at the events of the BRICs, it could be they are not on schedule for that particular areas to be load shed,” he said.
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The Summit is set to take place at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg from 22-24 August and will see the leaders of Brazil, India and China in attendance.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be attending the summit as he did not want to jeopardise talks. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will represent Russia instead.
Ramokgopa also said Eskom is losing hundreds of thousands of megawatts of electricity due to a lack of consistent maintenance at some of its power stations, The Citizen reported.
The historical lack of maintenance of electricity infrastructure resulted in the underperformance of some power stations and is having a serious impact on the grid.
UPDATE ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ENERGY ACTION PLAN
This morning we are briefing the media from 10h00am on progress made regarding the one year implementation of the Energy Action Plan and the weekly generation outlook. pic.twitter.com/DX48AXIukG
— Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa (@Kgosientsho_R) August 13, 2023
“Part of the underperformance we are seeing is a function of historic reasons. Historic in this instance I’m referring to Eskom’s inability to invest in the maintenance.”
He also said that Eskom has spent R12.4b on Diesel since April but it is a cost necessary to protect South Africa’s economy and said they have had to continue burning diesel to prevent it from freefalling.
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Compiled by Matthew Petersen
