The ANC Youth League’s National Youth Task Team (NYTT) is calling for decisive action to be taken against the struggling executive leadership at Eskom.
In a strongly worded statement, the NYTT criticised Eskom's ability to keep the lights on, saying that for years there have been numerous turn-around strategies but no solution to the load shedding problem.
“We are at the mercy of sustained incompetence at the energy utility,” said the NYTT.
The task team said it had concluded that the executive leadership at Eskom did not take South Africans seriously and had no intention whatsoever to fix the country's energy needs.
“This is emphasised by the sudden return of load shedding just as Grade 12 learners are writing their exams, when the greater part of our workforce is forced to work from home and our national economy has been struggling to provide sustainable livelihoods to millions,“ the NYTT said.
The task team said it was concerned that there was no convincing strategy to intervene at Eskom in the interests of energy sustainability from the political leadership in government.
“The absence of a clear action plan to roll out the almost 20-year-old Integrated Energy Plan is cause for concern. It may even be possible that this longstanding energy plan is no longer central to the government's energy security strategy,” added the NYTT.
ANC Youth League Greater Johannesburg regional spokesperson Penuel Maduna also raised his concern about load shedding especially for Grade 12 learners, calling on President Cyril Ramaphosa to recall Pravin Gordhan as Minister of Public Enterprises, and Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter.
Maduna said Gordhan, De Ruyter and the entire Eskom management have continuously demonstrated failure to provide decisive leadership and resolve Eskom problems.
“Failure of the president to remove them will result in the young people led by the ANC Youth League liberating the people of South Africa by forcefully removing them from Eskom offices physically,” he said.
He said this was exemplified by them not taking seriously the plight of matrics, especially after having to navigate their schooling during a testing period over the devastating global Covid -19 pandemic.
Young people could not be subjected to load shedding particularly at a time when they had to face the most difficult exams that would determine their future, Maduna said.
He called on Eskom to suspend load shedding until the exams were over which was the least the government could do if they could not permanently scrap load shedding.
Eskom on Friday announced the implementation of stage 4 load shedding over the weekend and stage 2 load shedding today (Monday). | The Star