"Silo showed signs of stress in January" Solidarity

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 Trade union Solidarity says a coal storage silo that collapsed at Majuba power station in Mpumalanga had been showing signs of stress since January.

Union spokesperson, Deon Reyneke, told Sapa their members at Eskom said the power utility had started monitoring resonance in vibrations at the silo earlier this year.

He says monitoring equipment picked up vibrations every 30 seconds in June and July and that three weeks ago these vibrations were recorded every five seconds.

Reyneke says Eskom did nothing to fix the problem.

On Saturday a coal silo collapsed minutes after a crack was spotted, leading to a shortage in output from the Majuba Power station.

The knock-on effect was that Eskom was forced into rolling black-outs countrywide on Sunday.

However, the power utility said it managed to rescue the situation, with no need for load-shedding on Monday.