South Africa

‘A national disaster looms in winter’ — continued blackouts met with outrage

The power utility said it suffered further breakdowns at five power stations during the weekend.

Cebelihle Bhengu

Cebelihle Bhengu

Reporter

Councillors claim City Power's response time to attending to outages is poor, mainly because of its new policy on the use of contractors. Stock photo.
Councillors claim City Power's response time to attending to outages is poor, mainly because of its new policy on the use of contractors. Stock photo. (123RF/loganban)

The announcement by Eskom to extend planned blackouts to Wednesday has been met with outrage on social media. The power utility said it would continue to implement power cuts due to its “severely constrained generation capacity”.

Eskom said it suffered further breakdowns at five power stations during the weekend.

“Over the past two days, Eskom teams successfully returned a generation unit each at the Matimba and Medupi power stations. However, during the weekend, we suffered further breakdowns at the five power stations, putting further strain on the generation capacity,” it said on Sunday.

Eskom warned last week that power cuts could be extended beyond Sunday should its capacity remain constrained. It reported breakdowns at the Kriel, Medupi and Kendal power stations.

Here are some of the responses from social media:

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