South Africa’s biggest labour federation will embark on a nationwide protest on Wednesday that will keep workers from Eskom away from their posts amid a fourth day of rolling blackouts.
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South Africa’s struggling power utility started a third day of power outages, blaming issues including failures at two huge new power stations that are also the main source of the company’s massive debt.
Two new coal-fired power plants being built in South Africa are “badly designed and badly constructed”, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan said on Tuesday.
Eskom is moving to stage-4 load shedding with effect from 1pm on Monday. This means that the utility will shed 4GW of electricity, up from the 2GW it was shedding on Monday morning.
Eskom started a second day of power cuts on Monday, creating uncertainty that endangers businesses that are highly dependent on the utility, a group representing the biggest electricity users said.
Numsa says President Cyril Ramaphosa has confirmed its worst fears: that the ANC plans to privatise state-owned enterprises.
The easiest way to rescue ailing state power utility Eskom would be for government to assume part of its R419-billion of debt, CEO Phakamani Hadebe said.
President Cyril Ramaphosa vowed to rescue the ailing state power utility by providing it with financial support and splitting it into three entities after it suffered massive losses and piled on debt.
Much of the responsibility for the state of the dust-handling plant at the Medupi and Kusile power stations should be assigned to Eskom Generation rather than the contractor, says Jeremy Kirsch, MD of Clyde Bergemann Africa.
There’s been enough bad news about Eskom in recent months to rattle the hardiest bond investor. Or so you’d think.