Sacci: Load shedding adding to Covid-19 economic woes
The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci) believes Eskom should have used the Covid-19 lockdown period to fix its ageing infrastructure.
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Load shedding to continue on Sunday morning, Eskom confirms
The power utility implemented the planned power cuts for the first time this winter on Friday. Spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha has now also warned that the severely constrained generation system will most likely persist through the coming week. "Implementing load shedding on Sunday is necessary in order to replenish the emergency generation reserves to better prepare for the coming week," says Mantshantsha.
The state-owned power utility announced the return of the dreaded rolling power cuts on Friday.
It has also had to implement stage two load shedding on Saturday and Sunday due to an increase in generation unit breakdowns.
Sacci's CEO Alan Mukoki says the group understand that Eskom has ageing power stations, however, loadshedding is not helping the economy.
"The Covid-19 pandemic has put enormous strain on economic activities and if you add to that the idea of loadshedding on top of that, it can only make the situation get worse.
"So we hope that the authorities, Eskom, in particular, will find all sorts of opportunities and deploy all their resources and resolve the issue.”
Listen to Mukoki below: