The Presidency says there was no ill intention on the part of the Eskom board when it told President Cyril Ramaphosa that there would be no load shedding before January the 13th.

The President’s spokesperson Khusela Diko says unforeseen circumstances resulted in renewed power cuts – despite the assurance of the Eskom board.

“The President had made the statement that there would be no load shedding during the Christmas period up until January 13, and this was based on the emergency recovery plan put forward by Eskom. You’ll remember that the system was stable during the December period. Now what has subsequently happened could not have been planned for and that’s why we keep saying that there’s been no planned load shedding as Eskom had committed. These are breakdowns that subsequently changed the information that had been given to the president, and therefore no we don’t think that it was misleading.”

Meanwhile, Eskom has announced that it will downgrade its stage two load shedding to stage one from six o’clock on Friday morning to 11 o’clock.

In a statement, the power utility says this is because some units have returned to service following various breakdowns. Technicians have continued to work to bring the remaining units back into service.

Eskom says it is also working on replenishing its emergency reserves.

On Thursday Eskom continued with stage two load shedding throughout the day.

Source: SABC