Ramaphosa: Water works may be exempted from load-shedding

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The government has asked Eskom to exempt water plants from load-shedding to halt supply disruptions plaguing parts of the country, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday.

“There are discussions that continue between Eskom and water supply entities and also local government with regard to ensuring that load-shedding does not necessarily impact negatively on pump stations,” Ramaphosa said in reply to a supplementary question in the National Council of Provinces.

He noted that some municipalities have set up generators to ensure water pumps continue working during outages to fill reservoirs.

“Others don’t have that capacity and that is why we are focusing more and more on reducing load-shedding and also on getting Eskom to try to exempt some of those areas where pump stations are negatively impacted.

“So it is an involved process and fortunately our minister of electricity has taken this on board, it is something that he is also focusing on,” Ramaphosa said.

“We are working on an arrangement with Eskom but ultimately, as I have often said, reduction of load-shedding and final elimination of load-shedding will be the answer and I am confident that we will get there.”

Water treatment plants, along with hospitals, harbours, railways and other critical infrastructure are supposed to be exempted from load-shedding in terms of national state of disaster regulations promulgated last month. 

The government and Eskom are facing a class action suit led by the United Democratic Movement. The applicants are asking the high court to declare load-shedding unconstitutional and to issue an order that key facilities be spared load-shedding or provided with alternative power supply.

Eskom has argued that it is impossible to exempt infrastructure because of the way it is embedded in power supply lines, saying this would defeat the purpose of load-shedding and risk collapse of the national grid.

Apart from affecting reservoir levels, load-shedding has also been blamed for damaging ageing water infrastructure.