IEC hoping lights stay on at its national results centre
The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) will be doing everything in its power to ensure the lights stay on at its national results centre in Tshwane.
The centre, which is the IEC’s nerve centre during the local government elections, had to be evacuated on Saturday due to power failure.
The commission’s CEO Sy Mamabolo says they have made provision to try and mitigate any loss of power.
“What we have ensured during this period is to do preventative maintenance as part of our preparation of assuming occupation of the hall. In the circumstances, a circuit breaker within the distribution box burned and affected the distribution of supply.
“We do have generators on site but those generators distribute via distribution box so we do have the City of Tshwane’s electricity department on site. We do have electricians from our service providers and we do have Eskom on site. So that we are able to react a lot quicker than was the case yesterday.”
The power failure at the centre comes on top of concerns over load shedding during the elections. w
Last week, power utility Eskom was forced to implement stage two load shedding, which quickly escalated to stage four due to breakdowns totalling 4 161MW.
Load shedding was suspended on Friday.
However, the nation’s grid continues to be vulnerable.
