Nelson Mandela Bay apologises for NO LOAD SHEDDING

While most of South Africa puts up with load shedding, residents of Nelson Mandela Bay were recently spared the inconvenience

Sep 28, 2022 - 18:49
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Nelson Mandela Bay apologises for NO LOAD SHEDDING

While the rest of the country had to endure bouts of load shedding on Tuesday evening, 27 September 2022, residents of Nelson Mandela Bay in the Eastern Cape were spared the inconvenience – and the municipality even apologised for it.

Eskom has been struggling to keep the lights on for several weeks now, having reached stage 6 at some point.

load shedding
Load shedding will continue again next week, Eskom said. PHOTO: Pexels/pixabay

WHY NELSON MANDELA BAY WASN’T ‘LOAD SHED’

A go-slow by workers at the municipality resulted in the Nelson Mandela Bay area’s load shedding schedule being disrupted that evening. Expectedly, some residents were pleased, but also surprised when it was announced that the rolling blackouts would not be enforced.

“Due to unforeseen circumstances experienced by the city’s electricity and energy directorate there will be no load-shedding implemented this evening,” the Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) municipality said in a Twitter post.

The municipality’s Mayor Retief Odendaal later went on to shed some light on the situation and also apologised to residents for not implementing the rolling blackouts.

“In addition, it was also the reason for our inability to load-shed tonight [though this should be a welcome reprieve to most residents, no doubt!] We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused as a result of the municipality’s inability to deal with these issues,” he said.

Eskom has updated its schedule for the power cuts. The embattled power utility said Stage 3 and Stage 4 load shedding will continue to be implemented between 00:00 – 16:00 and 16:00 – 00:00 daily until Saturday.

“Breakdowns currently amount to 15 492MW while planned maintenance is 5 076MW. A full statement and a further update will be published Friday afternoon,” said spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha.

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