Eskom ‘not budging’ on load shedding during matric exams
The Department of Basic
Education says it tried its best but Eskom won't budge.
Schools will not be getting a load shedding exemption during the matric exams.
"The response of senior management of Eskom to us is that we need to make the choice. Do you want to suspend load shedding and then see if the entire country going into total blackout? Or should we continue with the load shedding and manage it has best as we can in terms of our exams?” said Rufus Poliah, who is the Chief Director for National Assessment and Public Examinations.
“So I think in we're in an extremely precarious situation."
He says they've been locked in meetings with Eskom's managers [over the past few days] to try and convince them of the importance of a load shedding reprieve - especially on the days matrics are scheduled to write computer-related subjects.
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Poliah says under their school guidelines introduced to cope with the power cuts pupils will be given the opportunity to rewrite their papers if there are load shedding interruptions.
Addressing the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education on Tuesday, he said Eskom's agreed to give marking centres a break from the blackouts.
"They have promised us that they will try isolate the marking centes where marks are being captures, centres where processing is going to take place because we have a few and we have given them the coordinates.”
