North Coast faces prospect of Christmas in the dark

As the Dolphin Coast faces a festive season of blackouts caused by load-shedding, the local economy, tourism, and the already vulnerable electrical system are starting to take strain.

Showing no signs of backing down, Eskom announced last week that it will implement stage two load-shedding, blaming the cuts on breakdowns, maintenance and strike action that led to a shortage of coal.

While Eskom claims that load-shedding is to last until next year, energy experts predict the worst is still to come.

Energy expert and partner at Mining & Energy Advisor, Ted Blom said in his blog that Eskom is in denial of the “game over” situation.

“Eskom’s generation capacity is expected to further decrease from 72 percent to below 50 percent at Mpumalanga coal stations – a situation which could intensify blackouts. The problematical supply of coal over the next five years could contribute to further outages while Eskom states the uncertainty of future tariff increases could well extinguish the lights.”

Also read: 7 tips to help you combat loadshedding

Although it has only been a week of load-shedding so far, Ilembe Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Tourism CEO Cobus Oelofse said the impact has been disastrous.

“Apart from losing 25 percent production time in an eight-hour working day, the cost of keeping the lights on are crippling for businesses that need, want and continue trading. The reputational risk for our national economy is probably the most disconcerting – at a time when everybody is promoting South Africa with renewed enthusiasm as the desired investment destination, Eskom cannot meet the current demand for energy. “

The power utility’s debt currently sits at more than R400 billion which opposition DA member of parliament and shadow minister of public enterprises, Natasha Mazzone, blames directly on the Gupta brother’s involvement in state-owned enterprises.

“In a nutshell, Gupta-linked companies bought out various coal mines and this affected the way coal was distributed as well as the cost of coal. Companies like Optimum Coal Mine who supply coal to major power stations in Mpumalanga are now in business rescue. Their staff have not been paid for a period of over two months and the strike has caused coal shortages.”

Mazzone said coal was used as a catalyst for state capture.

“The way the Guptas were able to capture the state was to capture many of the coal mines in the first place and that is the reason we now sit with a situation where we do not have enough coal. They continued to under supply coal to Eskom although they were being paid in advance. The people who were in charge at Eskom were so captured by the Guptas that they did not even know how to do the job yet they had been put in places where they should not have been. They did not know how to deal with the challenges facing Eskom and therefore no changes and no foresight was ever enforced.

“State capture was not just about people making a quick buck from buying off politicians, it was that people made a quick buck by making sure that South African’s suffer the consequences and we are doing so today by having load-shedding.”

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