South Africa’s Minister for Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, has said the team at Eskom, a public utility company, is “having sleepless nights” trying to find solutions in order to end load shedding plaguing the country. During his visit to Kusile power station in Emalahleni, Ramokgopa met with Eskom management teams, and spoke to the media shortly afterwards. “It is important that we get to share with the country the kind of progress that we are making”, he says.

“..We are working very hard, we are burning the diesel, the team is having sleepless nights to make sure that we improve the energy availability factor, very aggressive on the demand side. We are doing everything possible to ensure that we don’t go to hire stages of load shedding.”  Ramokgopa added.

Last week,  Eskom, the national electricity utility warned the country faces a difficult winter season ahead with the likelihood of increased national blackouts.

The deeply-troubled state-owned power company, Eskom, is currently cutting electricity to South Africa’s 60 million people for up to 10 hours a day in planned cuts because of a desperate lack of supply.