PRETORIA, August 19 – Altogether 37,880 households across the country have been connected to the electricity grid between April 1 and June 30, electricity parastatal Eskom said on Saturday.
“With 90 percent of South Africa now having access to electricity, Eskom will now put special focus on the three provinces that are lagging behind with electrification, namely KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, and Limpopo,” Eskom said in a statement.
To this end, Eskom had managed to electrify 37,880 households across the country within the first quarter of its current financial year (April 1 to June 30, 2017), with 9886 households being connected in KwaZulu-Natal, followed by 9755 households in the Eastern Cape, and 7502 in Limpopo.
“Electrification is about improving the quality of life of our fellow South Africans, and Eskom believes that each household electrified brings the nation a step closer to service delivery and poverty alleviation,” Eskom group executive for distribution Mongezi Ntsokolo said in the statement.
Ntsokolo said Eskom was gearing itself for even better results in the next two quarters (July 1, 2017 to December 31, 2017), where the focus would be on building new infrastructure to enable the roll-out of the electrification programme in remote areas.
“The results of the first quarter are a clear indication that Eskom has changed gear and has set itself up to deliver on this service. Our target is again to connect in excess of 200,000 new connections by end of our financial year,” he said.
– African News Agency (ANA)
