Eskom has warned that the power grid is under severe pressure and has urged people to turn off all unnecessary appliances.
Eskom has not subjected the country to load shedding for more than three weeks.
The power utility says load shedding -when it is implemented – can cost the country billions of rands in lost production every day.
In February Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said he recognise that load shedding causes hardship to the country and economy. He warned that the utility will post a substantial net after-tax loss at its next financial results.
De Ruyter was hosted by the free market foundation on its podcast to discuss Eskom’s current state of affairs.
Maintenance backlog
At least more than a dozen of engineering, oil, chartered accountants, construction and other companies that allegedly milked the power utility are still being pursued.
Eskom also announced that it still has a maintenance backlog that needed to be sorted out. To this extent, it has launched the reliability maintenance recovery programme, with the objective of dealing with load shedding.
The utility is still busy taking major units offline to carry out the required maintenance, the risk of load shedding gets elevated too.
In addition to trying to recover its money and addressing the persistent issue of load shedding, Eskom is still facing a R480 billion debt burden.
