President Cyril Ramaphosa says government is working closely with Eskom to reduce the power utility’s dependence on the national fiscus.
He was delivering his fifth State-of-the-Nation-Address on Thursday night. Only 50 people were allowed inside the National Assembly, in an effort to comply with COVID-19 regulations.
The financially struggling power utility has in past been given bailouts in order to keep the lights on.
Ramaphosa says reducing Eskom’s dependency on government will also assist with the municipality debt.
President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers the State-of-the-Nation-Address
Eskom suspends load shedding
Eskom suspended load shedding on Thursday morning as generation capacity had sufficiently recovered.
Eskom says another five units are expected to return to service soon.
The power utility implemented Stage 3 load shedding on Wednesday after a number of generation units broke down.
The power utility says the load shedding was necessary to preserve and replenish the emergency generation reserves and to maximise the capacity available during the day.
Meanwhile, earlier in January, economist Mike Schussler said South Africa was losing between R700 million and R900 million a day due to the ongoing load shedding implemented by power utility Eskom.
In the video below, Schussler and Cosatu’s Sizwe Pamla speak about the impact of load shedding:
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