Eskom is hoping that by the end of March next year, it would have done enough to mitigate its financial and power challenges facing the power utility.
The organisation is suffering ramifications of decisions that date back several years ago. These include matters of human resource, persistent outages due to poor power production and failure to maintain its technical facilities.
Eskom CEO Phakamani Hadebe says the power utility had no other option but to implement load shedding.
He says unplanned maintenance and planning for winter months is the reason for the return of load shedding.
He says load shedding is not the worst case scenario, people just need to understand the reasons behind it.
“Load shedding helps us to recoup or resuscitate the system because if we do not do that then we will have blackouts and problems associated with blackouts are too much to contemplate.”
It’s also been widely reported that Eskom wants government to absorb about R100 billion of its debt as part of a rescue plan, but the CEO says its management has only submitted a strategy to the board and they haven’t spoken about figures yet.
Watch interview below:
Hadebe says Eskom has a financial plan to get them out of the difficulties faced by the power utility. He admits it will not be easy and it will take time but the plan is there and will be announced soon.
