After cutting his visit to Egypt short, President Cyril Ramaphosa attended a media brief regarding Eskom and exposed sabotage as a contributing factor to the recent uninterrupted load shedding issues.
Ramaphosa stated that although there were a number of factors involved in the power cuts from heavy rains to the age of the stations, at least 2 000MW of power was lost due to sabotage.
“What has also come out as a great concern is that there has been a measure of sabotage, sabotage that has lead to the loss – during this period – of 2 000MW, where someone in the Eskom system disconnected one of the instruments that finally lead to one of the boilers tripping, and us losing as much as 2 000MW,” he said during the briefing.
“[The sabotage] came at a time when we were having all these problems and just added to the many other problems. On its own, it would not have really sunk the system,” he added.
Ramaphosa also said that roughly 10 hours of down time was caused by the acts of sabotage. According to Ramaphosa, as of December 17 it will be unlikely for load shedding to continue until at least January 13.
According to Fin24, Eskom head of Generation Bheki Nxumalo said that the ‘tampering’ took place at Tutuka Power Station in Mpumalanga last week and was resolved by the weekend.
Several units will soon return to service and contribute towards alleviating the pressure that is currently on the system, all that’s left is for locals to watch, wait and hope that load shedding will come to an end in the coming days.
