The North Gauteng High Court ruled that government hospitals, clinics, schools and police stations should be exempt from loadshedding. The court gave the Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan 60 days to adhere to the ruling.
The National Professional Teachers' Organisation of South Africa (NAPTOSA) warned that if the exemption is not implemented, schooling could come to a standstill. This as loadshedding continues to negatively impact teaching and learning at schools.
NAPTOSA KwaZulu-Natal CEO Thirona Moodley explained that some schools are closing early as they can’t continue due to loadshedding. The ongoing power cuts are also affecting administration systems at schools.
They explain that many schools have been equipped with smartboards, laptops and smart devices to aid learning. However, these tools are not being used due to the ongoing power cuts.
With the state of the energy crisis at the moment there are hours in the day when these devices cannot be used and more often than not teachers prepare their lessons around them and these lessons cannot take place. There are subjects that are completely dependent on electricity.
Moodley says the government must look at ways they can implement the court judgement. While they acknowledge that it may not be possible to provide schools with electricity from Eskom, they may be able to find practical solutions including providing schools with inverters or generators.
It could mean providing schools with an inverter to start with or it could be providing schools with a little generator to power up some of the resources so we have uninterrupted schooling at the time.
Minister Gordhan revealed that they are appealing the ruling handed down by the court to prevent loadshedding at public facilities. They were concerned that the ruling to make public facilities exempt from ongoing loadshedding could put the country’s electricity grid under “undue risk”.
Moodley says it's astounding that the government wants to contest the ruling as it is the government’s obligation to supply energy for the country.
During periods of loadshedding, Eskom implements a rotational schedule, which means that different areas are affected at different times. The schedule is intended to ensure that the impact of loadshedding is spread evenly across the country.
As higher stages of loadshedding are implemented, teachers have fewer hours of electricity availability which is negatively impacting learning at schools.
