Cape Town – South African Police Minister, Bheki Cele has revealed that the ongoing power cuts are some of the issues affecting productivity at some police stations.
Cele said this while addressing the media during a march by the Police and Prisons Civil Right Union (Popcru) to demand better working conditions on Tuesday.
He said some police stations had come to a “standstill” due to load shedding while some officers had been injured on duty because of “darkness”.
“Several police have got injured because of darkness. It does affect us. Police stations come to a standstill because there is no electricity. But also, [some] problems … are in the hands of the other departments, especially when it comes to stations and generators,” said Cele.
He said that police officers put themselves in danger, as they pursued criminals when there were power outages.
“This thing of working in the darkness, not necessarily in the offices, but out there, causes more damage. More cables are stolen when there is no electricity and police must chase these criminals in the darkness, putting themselves in more danger. We hope this is resolved and quickly so we go back to normality and do our work in a normal way.”
Meanwhile, Eskom has announced that load shedding will continue at stage 5 until Saturday morning while stages 4 and 3 will be implemented until 05:00 on Monday.
Loadshedding will continue to be implemented at Stage 5 until Saturday morning, thereafter,
Stages 4 and 3 will be implemented until 05:00 on Monday pic.twitter.com/OARWUNMgw2— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) September 23, 2022
The power utility said that capacity constraints will persist throughout next week, suggesting that load shedding will be implemented at stage 3 for most of next week.
“Eskom is currently experiencing constraints from its diesel suppliers that is affecting the availability of its bulk diesel to the Ankerling and Gourikwa Open Cycle Turbines which have the capacity of 2 000MW. Should this uncertainty of diesel supplies persist nighter stages of load shedding may be requires,” Eskom said.
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Compiled by Olwethu Mpeshe
