Cape Town - The inept Eskom management have blamed anything and everything under the sun for plunging the country into yet another round of rolling blackouts, except themselves.
But that can no longer hold. The highly paid Eskom executives, including current chief executive officer Andre de Ruyter and chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer, were brought in to keep the lights on.
That task has proven to be beyond them because they have done everything but that. In a normal world, they would have long been fired, but not in our South Africa where their boss, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan, is untouchable.
If it is not state capture, it’s the lack of maintenance or shortage of skills, and sometimes sabotage.
We have yet to hear or see anyone being convicted of sabotaging Eskom.
In a statement explaining the recent load shedding, Eskom said: “Due to the sudden loss of three Kendal Power Station generating units, load shedding has been increased to Stage 4 until 05:00 on Thursday.
In the early hours of this morning (Tuesday) a conveyor belt feeding coal into Kendal Power Station failed.
To conserve coal, the power output of the generators was reduced, but this required fuel oil to be used to sustain the boiler combustion.
“Subsequently, the fuel oil plant supplying the units experienced a failure and shut down. This resulted in the trip of the three generating units.
The Kendal units are anticipated to return to service by the weekend. Prior to this, a generating unit each at Arnot and Medupi power stations had been taken offline for emergency repairs.”
The impact of these rolling blackouts in a stagnant economy is hard to put into words.
Just ask the small businesses that have had to close shop because of the lack of a stable power supply. Even established businesses recovering from the hard lockdowns tell of the huge losses they incur when resorting to using generators. Public health facilities are not spared as the Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness spent R21.8 million on diesel fuel supplies between April and June owing to the Stage 6 blackouts.
In essence, taxpayers are paying a costly price for the continued stay of clueless people at Eskom. It is an indisputable fact that De Ruyter et al have failed.
The sooner we get to grips with that fact, the sooner we may be saved from a complete blackout.
Cape Times