Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan has accepted an offer by trade union Solidarity to help recruit technical experts for Eskom.
Solidarity wrote to Gordhan a few months ago, offering to help mobilise critical skills for the sector, amid the recent spate of rolling blackouts.
Head of the Solidarity Research Institute Connie Mulder says, “It is not the first time that we have offered to help. We sent a list of engineers four years ago with people saying we have the skills and we are willing to help Eskom to restore generation capacity as much as possible. That list was ignored. Now it seems the hour has become very late.”
“But we are just making sure everyone on that list is still willing and able. Several of these people have worked at Eskom and some are just willing to come and help out. We have people who know how the plans work and can solve the generation problem and save Eskom as much as possible.”
The audio below is the full report:
Eskom’s rolling blackouts
Over the weekend, Eskom CEO André de Ruyter said South Africa is expected to emerge from rolling blackouts by the end of the week.
De Ruyter added that the system is however still unreliable.
“Towards the end of the coming week, we should emerge from load shedding. We’ve already lifted our indication for load shedding going forward, we’ve got a couple of big units returning towards the end of July, the risk will be significantly diminished, once Koeberg 2 comes back to the grid; that will bring a large measure of relief, but ultimately to put load shedding to bed, what we need is additional capacity, because the system as it is at the moment is still unreliable and unpredictable,” added De Ruyter.
Video | President Cyril Ramaphosa on an oversight visit to Tutuka Power Station in Standerton
