Electricity and energy minister Kgosientso Ramokgopa has vowed to end load reduction affecting mostly poor areas within 12 months — if there is no resistance in the affected communities.
In cases where communities resist for whatever reason, Ramokgopa said, they would extend the deadline by six months.
“So now today I’m announcing we’re ending load reduction,” proclaimed Ramokgopa in a media briefing on Thursday. “The period we have set ourselves is anything between 12 and 18 months — but it can be exceptionally shorter than that.”
A confident Ramokgopa said he and the Eskom team would work around the clock to meet the deadline as he was concerned that the nature of the current bouts of load reduction had elements of discrimination.
“What is more worrying about load reduction is that it’s got an appearance of discrimination on an income basis,” said Ramokgopa.
“So essentially you’ll see when I map the prevalence of load reduction in the country, the density or the concentration of load reduction is in poor areas and it gives an impression that we are penalising the poor, those who can’t afford, and those who are affluent and the rich who have a voice are let off scot-free.”
Load reduction is the cut-off from the grid of specific communities for about two hours during peak periods. The cut-off happens either:
- in the morning, when people are preparing for work and school, usually between 5am and 7am; and/or
- in the evening, from 5pm-7pm or 7pm-9pm, when they would usually be making dinner.
It is usually implemented by municipalities in which communities have “bridged” electricity meters and the revenue collected does not reflect the consumption.
Ramokgopa said load reduction in poor communities, including villages and townships, had dented Eskom’s efforts to end load-shedding.
“I have made the point that it is immaterial to these communities whether you call it load reduction or load-shedding. What is common is that there are periods in the day where they don’t have electricity.”
He said they have identified communities where they are confident they will not receive any pushback and can start working immediately.
He said the 18-month estimate is a function of how they are received by communities.
“We will end load reduction — if there is absolute co-operation by communities, we will end it in the next 12 months. And in areas where we experience resistance, we will invest time and effort to engage with everyone and in that instance might push it out by another six months,” he said.
“But I want to say to the country that we are going to end load reduction in the next 12 months if we get that co-operation. There are parts of the country where we are confident we will get that co-operation; there are parts of the country where we know it’s going to be difficult.”
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