The Institute for Security Studies(ISS) has warned that the current high level of crime may increase to greater proportions, as criminals are using power blackouts to their advantage.

This comes as Eskom implemented Stage 4 load shedding, which is expected to last until Friday morning.

Thereafter Stage 2 load shedding will be implemented until five o’clock on Saturday morning.

The institute’s Dr Johan Burger says house and business robberies are already on the increase and fears that the same will happen with other criminal activities.

Burger says, “Load shedding is just another opportunity which criminals are already exploiting and they will continue to exploit. We will see a rise in crime such as burglary, and other crime such as house and business robbery. They will be able to follow load-shedding schedules.”

Unemployment

On Monday, Economist Mike Schussler  warned that the country will continue to lose jobs if blackouts persists.

Schussler said South Africa could lose 350 000 jobs this year.  He says it has already lost a million jobs due to the rolling blackouts.

Schussler explained what method he used to calculate the job losses: “We can see from the amount of electricity which was not available that our growth in job creation has stopped. Based on that as a trend and the actual jobs lost, we do know that we have probably lost well over a million jobs because of not being able to implement projects. The mines do use a lot of electricity and that’s where we also see non-expansion.”

Generation capacity

Energy expert Chris Yelland says since the President announced the Risk Mitigation IPP Programme in 2019 not a single kilowatt of new generation capacity has come onto the grid.

In the video below, Yelland speaks about the blackouts: