Well, this is just an awful start to the weekend.

Eskom began to roll out stage 1 load shedding on Friday morning and said the power cuts would take place between 11:30AM until 9PM due to the breaking down of its power generation units.

What the hell, Eskom, that’s nearly a full day! What happened?

Eskom spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe told Fin24:

We are in the process of assessing what the cause of this breakdown is. But unfortunately, we have implemented stage 1 load shedding.

Well, an update from the cash-strapped utility says the breakdowns were again the result of protests by its workers over pay, reports eNCA:

Earlier, Eskom said 60 percent of its workforce had reported for duty on Friday.

The utility had obtained a court interdict on Thursday night to prevent workers striking and disrupting both power and coal supplies.

Another Eskom spokesperson, Dikatso Mothae, told Fin24 that some power station workers are being intimidated from going to work.

So clearly the interdict is doing sod all at this point.

Eskom workers are reportedly demanding a 15% wage increase, but Eskom claims that they are unable to offer salary adjustments. As a result, unions representing the workers – National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), Solidarity, and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) – have declared a dispute with the employer.

Phasiwe said the wage dispute had been referred to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, and he reckoned workers should not be blamed for Eskom’s shortcomings:

The workers have been given certain targets that they needed to meet in terms of the contracts they have with management and therefore the ills affecting this company shouldn’t be the responsibility of the workers.

But management is saying, “We are in a very difficult financial situation. Can we sit down and try and plan  how we can improve so next year this time we will be in a better position?”

Ha, I highly doubt that Eskom will ever be in a better position if they keep up with this nonsense.

To check if and when your area is affected, Eskom has a tool available on their website that links to their load shedding schedules, which you can view if you click here.

Not sure that will actually work, given that it’s Eskom, but there you have it.

Alternatively, click here to use News24‘s GridWatch tool – although that might be out of date.

Eskom customers can also contact the Eskom customer contact centre at 0860 037 566.

If this prevents us from watching the Spain versus Portugal match at 8PM, there will be hell to pay.

[sources:fin24&eNCA&news24]