Parliament's public enterprises portfolio committee was told on Wednesday that South Africans could face load shedding until at least the end of March if the current electricity supply crisis persists.
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan and his acting director general Thuto Shomang were briefing MPs on the problems facing the power utility which led to breakdowns at power stations at the weekend and resulted in rotational power cuts which have been in effect ever since.
Gordhan told MPs engineers from Italy would be flown in to work with local counterparts to get to the bottom of the operational woes at power stations which has led to consumer demand surpassing the amount of electricity available.
The minister said design flaws with the Medupi and Kusile power stations, which were meant to be a buffer to guard against power cuts when planned and unplanned outages occurred, also needed serious attention.
He did not rule out the possibility of litigation should they uncover wrongdoing related to the building of the two power stations which have seen massive cost overruns (Medupi from R24.9 billion to R145 billion and Kusile from R80.7billion to R161.4 billion).
Meanwhile: President Cyril Ramaphosa has pleaded with South Africans not to panic as rolling power cuts across the country continued for a fourth straight day.
"Let's not panic. In some ways we've been here before and we came out on the other side of the river...and we will find solutions and the solutions are actually emerging and we will actually be okay," Ramaphosa said from outside Tuynhuys.
Ramaphosa acknowledged the power cuts were having a "devastating impact on our economy and on the ordinary lives of people", but said Cabinet was seized with the task of getting to the bottom of the outages.
He promised that their would be some announcements in this regard during the debate on his state-of-the-nation address in the national assembly on Thursday afternoon. - ANA
