Load Shedding

This is a new term we have recently learned in South Africa. There is a huge shortage of electricity in the country, here is why - the Government wanted more people to access electricity so they told Eskom (power suppliers) to stop working on building and maintaining power stations and to concentrate on getting power to the people who didn't already have access to it. Now there is a greater output of power but supplies have not been increased. The Government have realized their short sightedness, apologized and given the go ahead for work on power stations to continue.
But the effect remains and we are experiencing the realities of "load shedding".
This is the label given to scheduled power outages. Power is cut off by block for two hours at a time which means that every home or business has at leat one two hour power outage per week. This is devasting for businesses, especially the smaller ones. I was listening to our local talk radio today and small business owners were phoning in in telling of business loss. One lady was a permenent make up artist and she said that she has tremendous problems when the power goes out. If she is working on a client and the power goes out the client ends up with haly a permanent eyeliner. Imagine being in the dentist's chair getting a tooth filled and the power goes off while the dentist is drilling....?

We were in a restaurant on Saturday night and the power was out. We waited a while and it came on after 45 min - it had been out for 2 hours.

But here's the thing. This is not a short term problem. It is going to take 10 years or more to fix.




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