President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Image: GCIS/ Flickr
SONA: Eskom vows to keep the lights on during Ramaphosa’s address
Eskom has promised to keep the lights on during Ramaphosa’s SONA, but can’t guarantee the same for the rest of the nation.
President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Image: GCIS/ Flickr
Eskom Chief Executive Officier Andre de Ruyter has confirmed that the embattled power utility will ensure that the State of the Nation Address won’t be disrupted by load-shedding.
De Ruyter’s comments follow Eskom announcing that it would be implementing Stage 2 load-shedding from Monday evening.
“We are in agreement with the City of Cape Town which is responsible for distribution of electricity to the Parliamentary precinct…that there will not be load shedding at the venue during the President’s speech and also prior to and after the event in order to ensure that there’s no disruption to this crucial part of our democratic processes,”
Andre de Ruyter
Utility will attempt to keep SA’s lights on during SONA
Furthermore, the Eskom CEO says it would be working to ensure that the entire nation does not need to endure load-shedding while President Cyril Ramaphosa speaks. However, De Ruyter admits that this cannot be guaranteed.
“Where we are right now with the generation system, it’s difficult to give an absolute guarantee that there won’t be any load shedding during Thursday evening. We are going to really do our best to restore the system not because of SONA per se but because we want to be a reliable supplier of electricity to the entire country,”
Andre de Ruyter
Eskom has been facing immense difficulties during the past few days with numerous breakdowns prompting the implementation of power outages after what appeared to be a stable supply from the utility.
Earlier, Eskom confirmed that it had experienced breakdowns at four power stations and delayed returns to service at a further two power stations.
Eskom CEO rules out sinister reasons for breakdowns
Essentially, the State-Owned Entity lost seven generating units with over 16 000MW of capacity stripped from the national grid. Despite this De Ruyter has ruled out any malicious actions as the reasons for the recent breakdowns.
“We have no conclusive evidence of sabotage at all and…one should refrain from speculating about sabotage without such evidence. One shouldn’t fall prey to the temptation of blaming sabotage when we have not adequately addressed issues like management and skills,”
Andre de Ruyter
In line with this, the CEO also revealed that Eskom has amplified security measures since 2021.
“We are conducting both overt and covert operations. We have noticed that the incidents have decreased significantly inside the power stations since we have stepped up our surveillance. But we, at this stage, don’t want to engage in any speculation until we have firm evidence that would suggest sabotage,”
Andre de Ruyter
Consequences for poor performance
Furthermore, the CEO confirmed that the utility intends to take action against station managers who have performed poorly.
“We are not satisfied at all with the performance of some of our senior executives…I’ve already given instructions to implement sanctions against the individuals concerned.”
“I can give South Africans an assurance that we are not going to be tolerating poor performance and that we will be taking appropriate action against underperforming people who do not live up to their duty both to Eskom as well as to 60 million South Africans,”
Andre de Ruyter
