Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has dismissed allegations that Eskom’s generation systems are on the verge of collapse.
He was addressing the media in Pretoria on government’s electricity generation plan.
The briefing also comes as Eskom downgrades its rolling blackouts from stage six to four due to an improvement in emergency reserves and a return of generation units to service.
Ramokgopa says suggestions that the country’s electricity supply system collapsed on Friday have no substance.
He says Eskom will use the festive season to increase planned maintenance.
“And therefore we should be having lower stages of load shedding and to some point, there will be days where there will be no load shedding and we are really confident about that projection. So the message is that we will have significantly low load shedding and there will be days where there is no load shedding.”
Ramokgopa says getting the country back to providing sustainable electricity supply is government’s priority.
“We have seen a significant improvement from Friday when we implemented stage 6 load shedding. And also in relation to our pump storage now, we have for Drakensberg additional generating hours now, it’s about 90 hours, so essentially we have made progress.”
Minister Ramokgopa updates on the electricity generation performance:
