10 May 2021

The Ministry of Mineral Resources, Green Technology and Energy Security, is working tirelessly to put in place long term solutions of power outages in Mochudi East constituency.

Addressing a kgotla meeting in Mmathubudukwane recently, Minister Lefoko Moagi said his ministry was aware of prolonged power outages that were rampant in the entire constituency.

The meeting came in the wake of outcry by residents that power outages in their area were rampant and costs them huge sums of money.

He said the problem was propagated by the fact that the villages of Sikwane, Mabalane, Ramonaka, Malolwane, Mmathubudukwane, Oliphant and Ramotlabaki were supplied with power from Eskom distribution network in South Africa, hence the faults and outages on the South African side affected them.

Mr Moagi informed them that faults which occurred in South Africa could only be addressed during the day as network repairs could not be undertaken during the night for safety reasons, hence prolonged outages.

He also informed them that he was aware that planned load shedding by Eskom that occurred when Eskom experienced generation shortfall was also affecting residents, alongside Botswana Power Cooperation (BPC) network faults on distribution network.

Meanwhile, Mr Moagi appealed to resident to be patient as there were long term solutions that include upgrading of Sikwane transformer to meet the power demand.

He said Eskom would engage and notify BPC on planned outages and load shedding, so that BPC could inform residents.

Furthermore, he said inspection of network constraints would be carried out frequently and that BPC was enhancing maintenance of the distribution network in the river villages, adding that replacement of rotten poles was ongoing, as well as servitude maintenance (tree cutting) to clear way for BPC emergency vehicles. Mr Moagi further appealed to residents to be on the lookout for criminals that vandalise power equipment as copper theft was on the rise.

He also appealed to them to tap the opportunities in the National Energy Policy that encourages use of renewable energy and fossils to generate electricity that include use of coal bed, roof top and cow dung. Residents appreciated government’s efforts, but decried that small businesses were mostly hard hit by shortage of electricity, in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic.

They complained that electricity faults were reported in Kweneng and that it took long to attend to their queries. Ends