Joburg wants 3-day load shedding exemption
The City of Johannesburg has sent a plea to Eskom, asking for it to be exempted from load shedding for three days to allow it to deal with the high number of power outages.
The city says while progress has been made in addressing thousands of outages as a result of last week’s flooding, more faults are being logged due to the persistent wet weather.
The city's MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services Department Michael Sun says load shedding prevents City Power from effectively attending to the outages and stabilising the situation.
“It is a simple fact that power lines and infrastructure cannot be worked on when there is no power, and cable theft increases exponentially during blackouts. Accordingly, the Executive Mayor, Cllr Mpho Phalatse has on behalf of City Power submitted an urgent request to Eskom for exclusion from load shedding for a period of 72 hours to clear the current and increasing backlog," says Sun.
The call also comes after four City Power technicians were held at gunpoint and robbed by six men whilst attending to a fault in Jeppestown.
"Threats and intimidation of technicians are reported daily. We are appealing to all Joburgers to help us to keep our workers safe so we can get thru this crisis together,” Sun says.
“To vandalise infrastructure such as mini-sub stations to vent the anger of power outages will only delay restoration even longer and put hundreds of other residents in the dark.”
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