South Africa: Gordhan Meets Eskom Board

Public Enterprises Minister, Pravin Gordhan, has held an urgent meeting with the Eskom board.

This comes after the power utility on Sunday announced it would implement Stage 4 and 5 load shedding after it experienced more breakdowns at its power stations over the weekend.

The Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) in a statement said Gordhan was informed during the meeting that the relevant Eskom board committee had recently engaged with power station managers and the generation management team to apprise the board of the situation at power stations.

"The DPE is urgently working with National Treasury and Eskom to find the money to buy supplies of diesel," said DPE spokesperson, Richard Mantu.

In addition, DPE will be engaging Eskom on several other issues.

These include looking for savings within the existing Eskom funds for the ongoing purchase of diesel and maintenance.

Another issue of engagement will be an assessment of the board on the challenges Eskom faces in the current fleet of power stations, and the exceptional interventions that must be made to create more reliability in the performance of power stations.

Mantu said the board is "urgently seeking the assistance of all the enforcement bodies to immediately bring a halt to the local level disruptions and criminal activities which impact on power stations".

"Eskom undertakes to continuously ensure that its officials are made more cognisant of the importance of a reliable electricity system to the economic and social well-being of all South Africans," he said.

The DPE said all possible efforts are being made to ensure that all of the measures in the national electricity plan are implemented.

This article originally appeared on SAnews.gov.za

Photo: SAnews.gov.za