Durban – DA leader John Steenhuisen said he has written to president Cyril Ramaphosa requesting an urgent meeting to find out why the suggested solutions for resolving load shedding haven’t been implemented.
The country is currently on Stage 6 until further notice.
Steenhuisen said he wants to hear “from the horse's mouth” why Ramaphosa's government refuses to implement obvious solutions to the load shedding crisis.
The suggested solutions were:
- Unbundle Eskom into separate transmission, distribution and generation entities and open the market for electricity generation to private power producers
- Appoint skilled engineers to run the transmission, distribution and generation elements of Eskom, and stop all political interference
- Declare a ring-fenced state of disaster in order to exempt Eskom from all obstacles to efficient spending and rapid decision-making, such as localisation and BEE legislation
- Ramp up security at all key Eskom sites and deal decisively and harshly with saboteurs
- Do everything possible to enable private generation to come online soonest, such as lifting the 100MW cap.
Both the DA and many energy experts have been proposing these solutions for years.
“Instead of announcing progress on any of these, Ramaphosa’s first act in his second term as ANC president was to deal yet another blow to Eskom by announcing that the utility will be moved from the Ministry of Public Enterprises to the Ministry of Energy,” he said.
Steenhuisen further blamed the ANC and said while it was in power, the electricity crisis was only going to get worse. He said the electricity crisis was now the single biggest threat to SA’s well-being and it was doing profound economic and social harm.
“Last year, it cost South Africa R560 billion rand in lost productivity. This translated directly to more poverty, more unemployment, more inequality and more crime. We have had a full year of load shedding altogether since 2015. That is a full year of economic activity lost to our economy,” said Steenhuisen.
Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter announced his resignation from the power utility late last year but will remain in the position until March until a new CEO is appointed.
Daily News