As Eskom celebrated the power utility’s 300 days without load shedding, many communities across the country had little or no reason to cheer.
The community of Hammanskraal’s Ward 75 was one of those with brickbats instead of roses to throw at Eskom and Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa. They took to the streets on Friday to express their frustrations about the other form of blackout used by the power utility quite regularly these days to avoid equipment and network failure - load reduction.
In many such communities just too many people have either not been connected to the electricity reticulation grid and some have to endure long periods of blackouts, either as a result of load reduction or faults.
The significant milestone that Eskom reached last week, going for more than 300 days without load shedding, is something worth noting or marking somehow, but it is simply too early to celebrate.
The utility’s group executive for generation, Bheki Nxumalo, was correct in highlighting that these “300 days without load shedding have been characterised by a significant reduction in unplanned outages, which have long been one of the biggest challenges, a notable improvement in the energy availability factor of approximately 7% and savings in diesel expenditure of R16.42-billion”.
To him and all at Eskom the nation should say, owes some debt of gratitude. Eskom has indeed successfully dealt with the critical challenge of power plants tripping due mainly to poor planning and maintenance. But there are many other challenges ahead. There is still a mountain of a job ahead.
It was a good start and some significant progress was indeed made since the start of Eskom’s Generation Recovery Plan launched in April 2023. Indeed, the state-owned company has come a long way. But there is simply no time to celebrate, to rest on one’s laurels.
All things considered, perhaps the view to take is that Eskom under the current leadership has begun well this marathon job of fixing the utility.
The Star