By Daniel Itai.
(News of The South) – South Africa’s electricity supply entity Eskom is facing a difficult time in keeping the lights on. A dire depletion of emergency fuel reserves, unplanned breakages, and poor maintenance programmes have been attributed to the power cuts.
The southern African country has been facing sporadic blackouts throughout the year which have relatively affected businesses and households.
Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan also laid Eskom’s woes on foreign governments which owe the state owned entity a whooping R632 million (approximately US$43 million).
Mozambique is owing R221 million, Zambia R89 million and Zimbabwe R322 million in outstanding payments.
However, Gordhan said there was an amicable payment plan with the three countries.
“Eskom and Zesa which is Zimbabwe’s power utility entity currently have a payment plan agreement for the settlement of the debt and Zesa is paying off the debt as per the agreement.
Zambia’s power utility Zesco owes Eskom for power supplied during a previous drought. The two parties are in negotiation over a payment plan,” noted the public enterprise minister.
Eskom also issued out a statement earlier on today about what is transpiring.
“We will need to continue to replenish both our water levels at pumped storage schemes and diesel for our open cycle gas turbines.
Our objective remains not to implement load shedding but with more than 10 500 MW of power off the grid, the probability of power cuts remains high,” said Eskom.
In addition to the R632 million owed by the foreign power utilities, Eskom is owed close to R20 billion by municipalities across South Africa.
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