Gauteng matric exams hit hard by load-shedding

The Gauteng department of education said matric exams, which started on Wednesday, were “severely affected” by Eskom's power cuts.

Department of education spokesperson Steve Mabona said matric pupils sat for the Computer Application Technology practical exam.

This was the first day of the final matric examinations.

Mabona said at about 10 centres pupils could not successfully proceed with the exams.

At three other centres pupils were unable to save their work and at seven centres pupils did not write at all.

He said pupils at only 26 centres were able to complete the exams, by making use of generators.

About 10,000 pupils were due to write the examination, Mabona said.

“If about 10 centres were affected, it means that it is quite a sizeable number of learners who could not write. We are hopeful that the department of basic of education will allow learners a rewrite.”

Mabona said they hoped the Information Technology (IT) exam would proceed without disruptions.

Embattled power utility Eskom on Wednesday warned that load-shedding was expected to continue all day on Thursday.

Eskom's acting group executive, Jabu Mabuza, said in a statement the implementation of stage 2 load-shedding was to protect the power system from a total collapse or blackout.

The rotational power cuts were needed because the electricity system had become “severely constrained”, the statement said.

“We understand the inconvenience that comes with load-shedding and want to assure our customers and South Africans at large that our objective is not to implement load-shedding; if necessary, to do so at minimal levels, with as much predictability as possible,” Mabuza said.