Defaulting municipalities make arrangements with Eskom

An announcement that the load shedding risk is low is always welcome news.

But‚ Eskom had that and even better news for residents of four Eastern Cape municipalities on Wednesday morning.

The “planned supply disconnection” to Gariep‚ Maletswai‚ Ikwezi and Nxuba because of outstanding debts owed to Eskom and their failure to either pay or make arrangements to pay has been suspended.

The utility‚ which had commenced the punitive outages on Tuesday‚ announced on Twitter: “Bulk power cuts to four EC municipalities are suspended after intervention of EC Premier Phumullo Masualle & EC provincial government.

That “intervention resulted in municipalities making partial payment towards arrear debt & committing to a payment plan for the remaining debt.

“Eskom thanks the Premiere & provincial government & together with municipalities will continue working to find sustainable solutions.”

The parastatal later corrected the spelling of “premiere” after being corrected by a number of Twitter users.

The disconnections had been planned to happen at different intervals - 6am-9am‚ noon-2pm‚ and 5pm-9pm - for nine hours a day.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Tuesday described the outages as “a gross failure of governance” and “the first broken promise” of new Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Des Van Rooyen.

The party said that‚ “just one week into office”‚ Van Rooyen had‚ “after promising South Africa last week that ‘owing municipalities have arranged to pay Eskom‚ and financial management capacities are being developed’.

“This sets the tone for Van Rooyen to be a broken-promises minister‚” said the DA

Van Rooyen controversially served as finance minister for five days before being moved to his current post. Eskom also took to Twitter to encourage its followers to: “Fix leaking taps this festive season. Water drips‚ especially hot water ones‚ waste both water & electricity.”