Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says the country is dealing with a new crisis called load reduction which he says is due to underinvestment in electricity infrastructure by municipalities.
This as various municipalities implement outages to avoid overloading in high-density areas
Ramokgopa says this front has been exposed by the fact that Eskom’s generation side has done exceptionally well in ensuring that the entity is able to meet demand.
He was briefing the media on electricity distribution and generation performance in Pretoria.
“But we have seen that there is little to no investment that has been made in replenishing maintenance, the upkeep and protection and modernisation of this infrastructure. As a result of that, municipalities are under severe strain and they initiate what they call load reduction. So that has nothing to do with the performance of Eskom. It has everything to do with downstream action on the part of municipalities. That’s the crisis that is confronting us,” says Ramokgopa.
VIDEO |Minister of Electricity and Energy briefs the media:
