Angry KZN Residents Threaten to Burn Down Power Station Over Cuts, SA Says Bad Idea: “Okay, Then What?”

• A group of about 400 KZN residents on Saturday headed to the Hammarsdale power station to protest the spike in power outages
• The residents allegedly threatened to burn down the facility if their demands for electricity were not met
• Taking to the comments, South Africans felt it might be redundant for the complainants to burn down the station

Frustrated KZN residents took to the streets to protest the recent spike they say they've been having in power cuts.

On Saturday, about 400 protesters headed out to Hammarsdale power station and threatened to burn down the power plant if changes were not implemented.

News 24 reports that it's alleged their ward councillor had planned to meet with the residents but had sent a representative to engage them instead.

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Taking to the social media streets, Mzansi felt it was really silly of the citizens to burn down the power station- Otherwise, they'd be left without electricity for even longer!

Check out some of the mixed reactions from social media users:

@therantoyanto said:

"And after burning it down they will get an uninterrupted power supply. Great move."

@s_n_warrior said:

"dumb on another level... sighhhhh....."

@pete_carswell said:

"We have to give frustrated and angry residents a better political and protest vocabulary/playbook. People need to stop burning things down (or threatening to) - but there needs to be a credible alternative that will get the attention of authorities."

Eskom loses workforce, mass resignations cause concern for power utility

In more news, Briefly News previously reported that Eskom is facing many challenges, but the high volume of highly skilled employees who have resigned recently is its most significant concern at present.

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Many of the Eskom employees who resigned in recent months worked in the power generation department. The head of this department, Phillip Dukashe, said that the situation poses a significant risk to the power utility.

"We have lost and unfortunately are continuing to lose a lot of people within generation. Figures that we saw, we saw about 40 people being lost a month. Now that’s extremely high," Dukashe said.

Eskom's challenges and load-shedding predictions

According to EWN, Eskom has fallen victim to vandalism, theft and sabotage, which has resulted in the power utility increasing security at its offices and power stations. One sabotaged power station is Medupi, which requires R2.5 billion to be repaired.

Eskom has announced that load-shedding will start up again soon as it needs to reduce the load on the power grid to allow for necessary maintenance work to occur. As a result, between January and March 2022, there could be as many as 29 days of load-shedding.

Stage 2 load-shedding, or higher stages where needed, will start in April and continue until August 2022 or even later in the year. An estimated 61 days of load-shedding will occur during this period, BusinessTech reports.

Source: Briefly News