Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown. Photo: Willem Law Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown. Photo: Willem Law
Johannesburg - Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown is in the dark, literally, about Eskom’s current power crisis.
On Friday when asked about reports that Eskom had allegedly introduced stage 4 of load shedding following this week’s repeated stage 3 blackouts, Brown simply answered: “I don’t know there is introduction of stage 4.”
She then summoned acting Eskom chief executive Sinethemba Khoza, in front of journalists, to check if that was the case. Then, while he stepped out, Brown revealed her frustrations with Eskom management to the assembled media.
“This is the problem I have with Eskom,” she said clutching her forehead. “It does create enormous uncertainty if that is the case.”
Khoza returned after a brief chat on the phone to deliver a message to Brown that stage 4 of load shedding had not been introduced – much to the minister’s temporary relief.
Brown said she would make public the findings of an inquiry into poor performance of Eskom’s generation plant, delays in bringing the new generation plant on stream, high costs of primary energy and cash-flow problems with the proviso it would not put Eskom or third parties at risk.
She said she needed the inquiry to “deep dive” into the affairs of the power utility to understand what was going on. She added that she had been frustrated and she had difficulty in getting “credible information” from Eskom.
“I still don’t know what were the reasons for the collapse of a silo at Majuba power station. I was told investigations into Majuba and Duvha would take three months but the investigations are still not forthcoming,” she lashed out.
“We need a deep dive into the organisation so we can have a sense of what’s happening.”
The minister even joked on Friday as Eskom appeared to suffer a deja vu this week in its struggle to keep the lights on with stage 3 of load shedding, telling the media: “This morning I could not blow-dry my hair (because of load shedding) so don’t take a picture of my hair.”
Eskom had not implemented stage 3 load shedding on two consecutive days, as it did this week, since January 24, 2008 – arguably the worst day of power cuts seven years ago – when it hit stage 3. This week the power grid, just as seven years ago, hit a massive crisis and more than 4 000 megawatt (MW) of electricity had to be shed quickly.
*On Saturday morning Eskom announced that it had moved to stage 2 load shedding.
“Eskom will implement stage 2 load shedding and load curtailment from 08:00 this morning, and this is likely to continue until 22:00 this evening,” Eskom said in a statement.
“The electricity supply system remains very constrained and vulnerable due to a shortage of generation capacity as several units are currently out of service due to planned and unplanned outages,” the power utility said.
Saturday Star and ANA