While many households and businesses are feeling the pinch of load-shedding, for Melisa Graaf of Westdene in Johannesburg being without electricity is a matter of life and death for her grandmother, Gertruida Wessels.
Graaf took to social media on Tuesday to explain how the rolling power outages posed a danger to her 82-year-old grandmother, who needed to be on oxygen 24 hours a day. The current oxygen machine they have is powered by electricity.
“It’s so stressful, because there is nothing else you can do. I know it’s tough for businesses too, but they can try to pick up when the power is back up but you can’t switch someone’s life back on,” she said.
Eskom announced on Monday that it would implement stage 4 rolling blackouts countrywide, starting from 1pm on Monday until 5am on Friday.
The power utility said this was due to ongoing generation capacity shortages.
When Sunday Times Daily spoke to Graaf at about 1.30pm, they had been without power since 8am — despite not being due for load-shedding for those hours.
Calls to Eskom to inquire whether it was a fault or load-shedding had not yielded any answers.
The five-hour-long power cut meant that the family had ploughed through litres of petrol needed to power their generator to keep her grandmother alive.
“It costs roughly R80 to have petrol for the generator for four hours, and we are still without power since 8am this morning,” said Graaf.
If load-shedding were to continue for a minimum of four hours a day for the next five days, this would mean an extra R400 needed for their budget for one week.
“I haven’t mentioned the engine liquid that you need to buy for about R40 a bottle, which you can only use about four times. These are all added costs because of the power outages,” Graaf said.
Having a seemingly unpredictable load-shedding schedule meant the family needed to prepare to go out and switch the generator on manually if the power ever went off at night.
“Once the power goes off, we can’t go back to bed because the generator is close to the gate to prevent the fumes from getting into the house. It could be stolen. So it means staying up all night,” Graaf added.
The family invested in a gas cylinder but she says it costs R140 to refill one small cylinder, which she said does not last eight hours.
“I am now on the last four litres of petrol, which means we need to make a plan to get more,” she said.
Graaf said the power outages were more than an inconvenience to her family, as she was still a student, studying on a NSFAS bursary. Her father, who is also ill, is not employed and her husband is the breadwinner.
Already, she said, the family spent on average R2,000 a month on electricity.
“And the worst is, even without load-shedding there are always faults that result in us being in the dark,” she said.
Graaf said the only solution to their problems would be to get a battery-powered oxygen machine. Any person willing to assist the family with the machine can contact Graaf on melisawessels4@gmail.com.
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