City of Mbombela’s electricity situation back to ‘normal’, for now
The Kruger Lowveld Chamber of Business and Tourism, in an effort to discuss the situation amicably, has asked for an open media conference with both the City of Mbombela and Eskom following the recent power outage.
The situation in the City of Mbombela (CoM) is back to “normal” for the time being after yesterday’s, December 7, citywide unplanned power outage.
Normal being stage 6 load-shedding. The Delta area as well as White River are still exempt from load-shedding. This is according to Linda Grimbeek, the COO of the Kruger Lowveld Chamber of Business and Tourism.
The City’s residents were left in the dark and without answers when their homes and businesses suddenly lost power ahead of the scheduled load-shedding times and also in areas that are not supposed to have it at all.
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According to a statement released by CoM yesterday evening, “The ongoing implementation of stage 6 load-shedding by Eskom has also led to an increased scope of a load reduction programme that affected about 40 municipalities across the country that experienced this sudden addition of areas/substations that were not on the normal schedule.”
It said Eskom had undertaken to investigate the prolonged outage.
The City added that it “would like to set the record straight and indicate to consumers that the outage had nothing to do with its debt to Eskom. The City continues to service its account with Eskom as per the agreed payment plan.”
Grimbeek confirmed this and said people should not make two separate issues one.
The fact that the City owes Eskom money and the fact that the country is in a power crisis must not be seen together. Yesterday was a case of crisis management and it happened countywide. She said it cannot be said it will not happen again, but for the time being CoM is back to normal load-shedding circumstances.
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She added that they have asked for an open media conference to be held in which both the municipality and Eskom could explain the situation as well as answer some questions.
“The country is in a crisis. It does not help to fight among one another.”
She also pleaded that residents do not make decisions in a state of panic, like not paying their electricity bills.
Lowvelder has sent an inquiry to Eskom regarding the outage and is awaiting feedback.
