Eskom has confirmed that several employees of one of its contractors are preventing construction at its Kusile coal plant.
Eskom spokesperson Dikatso Mothae told Fin24 on Friday morning that the contractor is a security services provider.
She could not yet provide further details in terms of how many employees were involved, but said the fact that construction on the site had now stopped should not put any additional pressure on the national grid.
The security personnel on strike work for a company called Hlanganani Protection Services. Hlanganani told Fin24 that they would not comment about the circumstances of the strike.
Eskom said just last month that Kusile Unit 3 had started to produce power for the first time and was ahead of schedule.
In an internal note from Eskom's chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer sent out to staff, he said, "The first synchronisation of Unit 3 marks a key milestone towards the full commercial operation of the unit.
"The next step will be the testing and optimisation of the unit which will result in it generating full power of 800MW of electricity, to be fed into the national grid for the country's consumption."
Kusile and Medupi, the third and fourth largest coal power plants in the world, were originally due to come online in 2014 and 2012 respectively, which would have given the country an extra 9600MW of power, enough to avoid blackouts.
But both are presently still under construction with a growing price tag.
Eskom chairperson Jabu Mabuza said previously that Medupi and Kusile would need R18bn each to complete. They would not, however, abandon the projects.
In March, South Africa faced rolling black outs as Eskom implemented Stage 4 load shedding to keep the lights on. This as the national power grid came under severe pressure, in part due to the impact of Cyclone Idai in Mozambique.
This is a developing story.
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