Pretoria – As the country fears that higher stages might be implemented during winter, newly appointed Minister of Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, has assured citizens that they won't experience power cuts higher than Stage 6.
“I want to give South Africans the assurance that… I don’t foresee us moving to higher, higher stages of load shedding… The highest we’ve gone to is Stage 6… I foresee a position where we won’t go higher than Stage 6,” he said.
Ramokgopa was speaking to eNCA yesterday (Friday) after his oversight visits to all of Eskom's 14 power stations across the country.
On Wednesday, Ramokgopa said that the country’s problem of load shedding would be resolved.
“We are in this together. The problems with load shedding will be resolved,” Ramokgopa said, while speaking at the Kusile power station in Mpumalanga.
“The problem of load shedding will be resolved. Ultimately, the problem of electricity in this country will also be resolved,” Ramokgopa said.
Ramokgopa told Kusile power station senior management that government would assist where possible to end load shedding.
“We have committed men and women with skills at Eskom. From the discussions we are having with Eskom, it is clear that the problem of load shedding will be resolved,” Ramokgopa said.
Ramokgopa said the problem wasn’t corruption, but lay more on the technical side.
“The problems and challenges that we have here are technical problems. They have nothing to do with so-called corruption,” he said.
Meanwhile, the ailing power utility announced yesterday that load shedding will remain at Stage 2 until 5am today (Saturday). Thereafter Stage 1 will be implemented until 4 o’clock this afternoon.
In a statement, Eskom said it expected load shedding to be suspended by tomorrow.
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