Published by on

Eskom’s CEO André de Ruyter announced on Friday, November 19 that an investigation has shown signs of sabotage at the Lethabo Power Station in the Free State.

According to De Ruyter, who addressed the media earlier today, unidentified individuals had sabotaged the power utility by cutting supporting steel pylons on the main distribution lines feeding electricity to the coal conveyor belts at this specific power station.

De Ruyter explained that although nothing was stolen from the site, there are signs that the lines were cut and the tower was pushed over onto the other line, News24 reports.

“At this point in time we lost about 3600 megawatts and it would have put us in much worse than Stage 4 load shedding, probably Stage 6 load shedding through a deliberate act of sabotage,” De Ruyter said.

De Ruyter went on to say that the case has been handed over to the Hawks for full investigation.

Meanwhile, the Western Cape’s Finance and Economic Opportunities MEC David Maynier indicated that loadshedding cost the Western Cape’s economy R75 million per stage, per day, IOL reports.

Also read: Eskom CEO to open a case of intimidation following threats on social media

According to Maynier, businesses in the province have already been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent stages of loadshedding make it difficult to recover.

Eskom has also implemented stage 1 loadshedding on Friday from 5am to 9pm. Eskom said in a statement that its teams had successfully returned eight generating units to service over the past 24 hours. However, no loadshedding is predicted for the weekend.

Also read:

Following calls for resignation, Eskom CEO says power utility seeing good recovery

Picture: Cape {town} Etc gallery

Article written by