Cape Town - Parliament has welcomed the scaling up of security at Eskom power stations after President Cyril Ramaphosa deployed members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) to Majuba, Camden, Grootvlei and Tutuka, all in Mpumalanga.
On Saturday Eskom confirmed that Ramaphosa had deployed the soldiers.
Parliament’s portfolio committee on mineral resources and energy chairperson Sahlulele Luzipo said the move to deploy soldiers followed the successful raid of an illegal coal yard by multi-disciplinary law-enforcement agencies in Mpumalanga.
During the raid more than 16 arrests were made and trucks and documents were seized.
Luzipo said the deployment of the army alone was not a sustainable solution and that talks about stabilising the country’s electricity should be about coming up with technological mechanisms to detect early signs of criminality and sabotage.
He said: “The committee has always held a firm view that the country’s electricity crisis is caused by Eskom’s inability to deal with maintenance of ageing power stations and internal sabotage, as opposed to a policy failure. We now feel exonerated.”
Even as the president deployed the army to deal with sabotage, Cape Town offered a R5 000 reward for information leading to the arrest of people vandalising, damaging or stealing electricity infrastructure or installing illegal connections.
A statement from the City said illegal connections and damage to infrastructure also led to outages and that the non-stop load shedding at high stages left infrastructure vulnerable.
“The City monitors hot spot areas, but residents are encouraged to report any incidents of theft, vandalism and damage to infrastructure to the City and the police.”
The City said Eskom’s constant load shedding at high stages affected its infrastructure negatively and that although the City had contingency measures in place, there were limits to what was possible at the moment.
The government and Eskom’s top officials have over the past few months complained about sabotage at power plants and the supply of substandard coal by contractors.
The utility implemented Stage 6 power cuts on Friday as a result of the breakdown of eight generating units overnight and said the breakdowns necessitated the excessive use of open-cycle gas turbines and pumped storage generation.
Eskom said in a statement on Friday that the inability to pump water overnight at the pumped storage schemes and the low diesel levels had resulted in critically low emergency reserves which needed to be conserved.
The statement said: “Since Thursday afternoon, breakdowns of a unit each at Duvha, Grootvlei, Tutuka, Kriel, Lethabo, Camden power stations occurred as well as two units at Kendal Power Station.
“In addition, the delay in returning to service a generating unit each at Arnot, Duvha, Matla, Camden and Hendrina power stations has contributed to the capacity constraints.”
At the same time, Premier Alan Winde last week held an extended meeting of the Provincial Executive Council to address preparations for load shedding-related risks.
Heads of departments, mayors, municipal managers, as well as Provincial Police Commissioner Thembisile Patekile attended the meeting.