GEORGE NEWS - Call centre operators of Eskom's customer care line 086 00 37566 have been supplying inaccurate information to callers inquiring about load shedding in George.
Callers have incorrectly been told that George Municipality is in charge of its own local load shedding and that the municipality determines when and for how long load shedding takes place.
This is completely false and the municipality has taken this up with the relevant Eskom re-presentatives. Only Cape Town Municipality is in charge of their own load shedding schedule.
Some callers were even told that George has power reserves – devoid of any truth as George has no capacity to build up reserves i.e. store electricity. When the demand for electricity exceeds generation capacity, Eskom applies load shedding at a selected stage according to the severity of the current situation.
Eskom also changes from one stage to another at very short notice as the availability of their plant changes. Director of Electro-Technical Services, Kevin Grünewald says that George Municipality's load shedding and power supply is regulated and controlled by Eskom and that the municipality has no say in the matter.
He says the restoration of power to George by Eskom has been late on many occasions and the municipality has made an arrangement with Eskom to switch the power on and off themselves on instruction from Eskom to improve the restoration time in future.
However, Eskom will continue to switch Wildeness, Uniondale and Haarlem on and off and if the municipality does not respond immediately, they will switch the city off themselves.
The power outages have also affected the city's streetlight control equipment. The streetlight communication system's batteries will be upgraded to accommodate the regular load shedding power outages to eliminate the problem of some streetlights burning during the day and
others not working at night.
The stage 1, 2 or 3 notifications received from Eskom are updated by the municipality to Twitter, Facebook and under News on the George municipal website as received.
E-mails and messages are sent by the George Municipal Communication Unit to all print and radio media to allow for radio updates - Algoa FM, EDENfm and Heartbeat fm.
Yesterday Eskom said there was a high probability for load shedding today, Thursday 11 December, and tomorrow, Friday 12 December. Eskom has indicated that it is unlikely that load shedding will take place on Christmas Day.
Going to press it was still unclear what the schedule for the weekend entailed.
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