eThekwini 'ready' to roll out full load shedding schedule
eThekwini Municipality's Electricity Unit says the majority of the city's substations are ready to implement the full load shedding plan, as early as next week.
"We've done a full assessment and we are now in agreement with Eskom.
"We have to put from stage 1 now, or all the substations that we believe are healthy, and therefore now producing a new schedule that's going to exclude those who are affected totally," says the city's electricity head Maxwell Mthembu.
"So at least we can have a similar loadshedding schedule. The one we've been running is a temporal schedule so far."
Mthembu says some substations cannot be switched off, as that would pose a significant risk to residents and infrastructure.
"But we know substations that we know were damaged beyond repair and are starting from scratch right now. That includes the Mariannridge substation and the surrounding which is somewhere in Pinetown, that also includes Toyota.
"Toyota substation actually wasn't affected by the flood, it burned down this year so those areas where we don't have a substation or rebuilding are not going to form part of the schedule."
The city announced on Tuesday that eThekwini will be returning to normal loadshedding levels.
The municipality was excluded from stages 1 to 3 of the powers cuts, since last year's disastrous floods.
Mthembu says the new loadshedding schedule will be made public later this week to help residents plan for the week ahead.
"The current schedule starting from stage 4 is the schedule we are going to be leaving. So the people who are affected today are going to be affected. It's not going to come from somewhere and any other new person who was not being affected may change."
Durban ratepayers are venting their frustration and anger over the news.
Ish Prahladh, the president of the eThekwini Ratepayers and Residents Association says it's killing the people, " Everything is killing us, our water, our electricity, our bills, our tariff increases, our fuel. We can't continue like this. We are really in disaster at the moment."
Prahladh says it'll place an additional burden on residents already struggling to keep up with other cost hikes. "It's going to add more now, as it is we are trying to find solutions, but now we have more issues with loadshedding coming for us."
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