South African municipalities across the country owing Eskom a staggering R78 billion are at risk of collapsing the power utility, which will plunge the nation into darkness.
This warning came from Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, who added that the debt could also cause the return of load shedding.
He said the R78bn debt was increasing at an alarming rate and on a daily basis and was to be urgently attended to otherwise the power utility would not be able to cope. However, he was sceptical that the matter would be addressed.
“Municipalities must pay that money. However, on an objective ground, they simply don’t have the means to pay… Eskom needs this money to reinvest in its infrastructure and perform maintenance to improve its generation fleet’s performance,” the minister said.
But he was of the view that it was not possible that Eskom would collect the R78bn.
“To give you the magnitude of the problem, if we don’t resolve it, our projection is that at the current rate by 2050, Eskom will be owed R3.1 trillion.
“Eskom will collapse. Generation capacity is going to be compromised. So, we must resolve this problem,” Ramokgopa said.
He called on the government to help these struggling municipalities to pay their debt before it was too late.
“It is municipality-related, but we can’t fold our arms. We need to help them technically. The non-payment is affecting Eskom’s ability to address distribution infrastructure needs – leading to the implementation of load reduction,” he said.
On Friday, Eskom marked 107 days without load shedding, despite the winter months when the demand for electricity is higher than usual.
Ramokgopa has also warned that because of the debt Eskom could be forced to implement load shedding.
“We are still working on the reliability of these machines, and that’s why you can’t speak with great confidence that load shedding is behind us,” he said.
Ramokgopa said the hope that load shedding is over is a false claim that can’t be substantiated.
“We must protect the interests of Eskom as a going concern, and ensure that municipalities can collect revenue. The biggest victims of all of that is the end consumer and by definition the South African economy.”
The minister said his department, mayors and municipal managers would address the challenge of electricity affordability and access to enable municipalities to collect revenue.
Last week, during the opening of Parliament, President Cyril Ramaphosa called on the new Government of National Unity (GNU) to continue reforming Eskom by increasing private participation.
Eskom CEO Dan Marokane reportedly echoed Ramokgopa’s assertions, predicting that there would be limited load shedding during winter, but that has not been the case so far.
Businesstech reported that Marokane said Eskom needed to stay below 14 000MW of unplanned outages to reduce the intensity and frequency of load shedding.
If unplanned outages increase to 15 000MW, Eskom’s winter load shedding prediction will take effect, and the country would experience load shedding again up to Stage 2.
The Star