Pretoria - The City of Tshwane has raised concerns regarding the government implemented load shedding imposed across the country.
Some areas of the country have had to go for as much as four hours without electricity, due to Stage 6 power cuts the country has been exposed to since Tuesday morning.
Eskom has since said this was due to the increase in generation planned maintenance, while they lost a further two generation units on Monday.
According to the metro, this is having dire consequences for the Tshwane electricity network which will prolong the power outages.
Municipal MMC for Utilities, Themba Fosi, said the city’s infrastructure was not coping with the impact of the high stage of load shedding because it was damaging the city’s electricity network.
He said the high stages affected the ability of the metro to attend to normal outages within the municipality.
“Our networks were never designed for load shedding and continuously turning the electricity network on and off has a major impact on the condition of our network infrastructure.
The power cuts have also become a challenge for the City to supply water.
Pretoria News recently reported that the City has been struggling with supplying water in some parts of the metro due to inadequate pressure from the bulk water supply pipes, which made it difficult to maintain desired water levels in its reservoirs.
Now as temperatures gradually increase with the change of seasons, high consumption of water by residents was also cited as a challenge.
Stage 6 load shedding has added to the woes leaving some parts with dry taps.
The metro’s spokesperson, Lindela Mashigo, said that reservoir levels were critically low as a result and that technicians from both Rand Water and the City were working around the clock to improve supply.
Recently Klapperkop and Karina street reservoirs were not coping to maintain the desired levels.
The reservoirs supply Sunnyside, Acadia and parts of Waterkloof Ridge.
Water and sanitation minister, David Mahlobo, said to help the situation the department had brought in an additional 150 megalitres into Tshwane’s system, however the city was losing 32% of the water due to cracked pipes and vandalism.
“If we don’t address the issues of the non-revenue water, even if we pump more, we will still lose a lot of water,” he said.
He warned residents to use water sparingly as temperatures rise.
Pretoria News