The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality has advised residents to stick to their load-shedding schedules on the Municipality's website even if Eskom sends out alerts announcing changes to the stages of load-shedding.
Earlier this week, confusion reigned across the Metro when Eskom announced an escalation of load-shedding from stage two to stage three, while the Metro continued to implement Stage Two.
According to the Metro's technical services, Eskom's provincial control centre in East london sends out an alert and it's the municipality's responsibility or decision whether or not to implement a particular stage.
The Metro's Acting Senior Director of Technical Services, Bernhardt Lamour, explains the procedure they follow at the load shedding control centre in Port Elizabeth..
"The control centre in East London phones the Nelson Mandela Bay control centre. We allow 30 minutes for that, if it does not happen in 30 minutes we would not be able to shedd those groups because of staff that need to go to sub-stations, they have to drive, we have to alert the customers, we have to phone communication departments and all the other stakeholders."
Lamour explains why the confusion arose earlier this week.
"We had been phoned by customers alerting us that Eskom announced stage 3 loadshedding, but we having not received such communication from the East London control centre, we could not implement stage 3 and when they phoned us they gave us 10 minutes to implement." says Lamour.
Municipality Spokesperson Roland Williams, says from now on the municipality will communicate to the public the particular schedules they are implementing on an ongoing basis.
