Emissions are rising from the cooling towers at Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd.’s Tutuka coal-fired power station in Mpumalanga.
The chair of Parliament’s Energy and Mineral Resources Portfolio Committee, Sahlulele Luzipo, welcomed the deployment of the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) to four Eskom power plants.
News24 reported Saturday night that a minimum of 10 soldiers would be deployed to each of the following power plants: Majuba, Camden, Grootvlei and Tutuka.
The move was “in response to the growing threat of sabotage, theft, vandalism and corruption” at coal and diesel power plants, said presidential spokesman Vincent Magwenya.
Luzipo said this came “shortly after” a successful raid of an illegal coal dump by multidisciplinary police agencies at Emalahleni in Mpumalanga on Thursday.
According to eNCA, more than 16 people were detained and trucks and documents were seized as a result of the raid.
Luzipo said: “The committee has always held the strong view that the country’s electricity crisis is caused by Eskom’s inability to deal with the maintenance of obsolete power plants and internal sabotage rather than a failure of policy. Now We feel exonerated.”
He added that talks about stabilizing the country’s electric power should be “devising technological mechanisms” to detect early signs of criminality and sabotage, “considering that the deployment of the army alone is not a sustainable solution.”
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