The Congress of South African Students (COSAS) has shared that students are bearing the brunt of the recurring blackouts.
Recently, Eskom announced stage 6 load shedding, this comes after a wage dispute with workers which led to a strike.
Cosas spokesperson, Douglas Ngobeni has emphasised that the problems that the power utility is facing aren’t small.
In an interview, Ngobeni shared:
With load shedding being introduced, this means that learners will be deprived of an opportunity to do what they are supposed to do or what is expected of them.
It is said that this mostly affects learners residing in rural areas, with no alternatives such as generators that'll kick in as soon as there is no electricity.
According to Cosas, load shedding is causing enormous damage and negatively impacting the learning process of students.
This comes after two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in learners missing class time.
During this period, the number of out-of-school children in South Africa tripled from 250 000 to 750 000 between March 2020 and July 2021, a Unicef report revealed.
Experts are of the opinion that load shedding is adding more pressure. It is for this reason that Cosas shared that should power cuts continue, it could increase the chances of learners failing.
