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R/£ Power cuts are normal: Manuel
January 23, 2007 Edition 1
Last week's power cuts will not harm South Africa's economic growth nearly as much as some people have predicted, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said yesterday.
"The numbers that they generate are complete and utter garbage ... It will not affect growth," Manuel said.
Manuel said Eskom's capacity was sufficient for the present and that it was normal for power plants to be shut down for routine maintenance, as occurred last week.
The cuts, which Eskom attributed to station maintenance and the shutdown of a unit at Koeberg nuclear power station, caused power failures from Cape Town to Johannesburg and Durban.
Meanwhile, Eskom will soon be flighting power alert messages on television to ask consumers to assist in the power crises by turning off all non-essential equipment.
In order to prevent instability and total blackouts municipalities all over the country have been requested to shed a percentage of their non-critical loads.
The eThekwini municipality is participating in the programme and has already put together a schedule that will be implemented in the event of it being necessary.
The power outages are expected to last for about two hours at a time.
eThekwini municipality's head of electricity Sandile Maphumulo said the department would "endeavour to notify all customers in advance of the interruptions".
He said the shedding would not only ease national capacity problems but would also prevent widespread outages that had the potential to cause "city-wide blackouts". - Daily News Reporter and Sapa
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