CAPE TOWN, June 25 (Xinhua) -- South Africa's electricity system has made some significant progress towards full recovery after the shortage of generating capacity, authorities announced on Monday.
The system's improvement is largely as a result of several units being returned to service from planned and unplanned maintenance, including those that were on outage as a result of industrial action, state-run electricity utility Eskom said.
Recovery teams at power stations continue to work hard to recover the rest of the units, the utility said, adding that Eskom has a mitigating strategy in place to increase coal stockpiles at affected power stations.
South Africa had been hit by continuous load shedding for about two weeks, seriously affecting economic activities and people's lives.
Eskom attributed the load shedding to industrial action, in which Eskom workers downed tools after the utility rejected their demand for wage increases. The strike disabled seven power stations.
But after a 10-day recovery period, Eskom has been able to end rotational load shedding, at least for the time being, said the utility which provides more than 95 percent of the electricity consumed in the country.
"While the system is stable, the risk of load shedding always exists. We continue to encourage residents and businesses to use electricity sparingly," Eskom said.
Eskom implements load shedding as a last resort to protect the national system from a total blackout which would have significant impact on the economic development of South Africa.
