eThekwini Municipality is expected to face load shedding from next month. The municipality was exempt from the rolling blackouts following the deadly floods which hit the province of KwaZulu-Natal in April and May.
In a joint statement released on Monday, Eskom and the City of eThekwini said Durban had been exempt from load shedding after the floods in April, which saw around 400mm of rain which damaged infrastructure. While many municipalities across the province were affected in varying degrees, eThekwini in particular took the full force of the storm, the statement read.
Maxwell Mthembu, the head of electricity in the city explained that, technically, the municipality was not exempted from load shedding. He said due to the significant damage to infrastructure caused by the floods, the city wrote a letter to Eskom and a decision was taken to leave eThekwini out of load shedding. However, this is not expected to change from mid-July.
“We lost between 700 and 800 megawatts of power at the time, and we are still trying to recover from this. As of today, we still don’t have more than 200MW of power. If you look at the megawatts, it is the equivalent of what load shedding is today. This means that in eThekwini, since the April floods, we have faced severe load shedding compared to any other part in the country. We are not exempted. With National Control and Eskom, we agreed that eThekwini will not be a part of load shedding for now,” Mthembu said.
Mthembu said the city and Eskom were working on a new schedule. He said some substations would not be affected. He said talks were underway for load shedding schedules to be put in place without causing further damage to infrastructure.
“We are hoping that this will be done by July 15, and we are aiming that by August 1 we will participate with load shedding, we want to make sure that as much as the city is struggling, we want to participate in helping the national grid,” Mthembu sad
