CAPE TOWN, June 30 (Xinhua) -- South Africa's national power utility Eskom on Thursday announced an extension of Stage 6 load shedding measure until Friday midnight, due to the continued "unlawful" strike.
Stage 6 load shedding, which had only been implemented once in December 2019, will be implemented from 2 p.m. this afternoon until midnight and from 5 a.m. to 12 a.m. on Friday, it said in a statement, adding that a minimum of Stage 4 load shedding will be required over the weekend.
Eskom said it has agreed in principle with the recognized labor unions on "the way forward" in the wage talks scheduled on Friday, whose deadlock led to the strike, and major unions representing Eskom workers have urged their members to return to work.
However, the latest statement said high levels of staff absenteeism and intimidation of working employees in some of the power stations are still rife.
This makes Eskom difficult to conduct routine maintenance and other operational requirements, which will further impact the reliability of generation units, it said, adding that it is still unable to return some generators to service.
Out of its total nominal capacity of 45,117 megawatts (MW), 20,628 MW of capacity is currently unavailable due to breakdowns and planned maintenance, according to the statement.
Ahead of the strike, it had already been on the capacity constraints, due to breakdowns of generation units.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in this year's annual State of the Nation Address described the "electricity crisis" as one of the greatest threats to economic and social progress, adding that the government has taken "firm steps" to produce additional generation capacity.
The impact of Stage 6 power outage on businesses is "huge", and small businesses are "the hardest hit", Dawie Roodt, chief economist at Efficient Group, a leading financial services group in South Africa, told Xinhua.
"The economy loses billions every day. The economy of South Africa is likely to grow lesser depending on how long the power cuts continue," he said.