Just News |
With load-shedding continuing to impair the country’s energy security and Eskom struggling to meet its short-term targets, as laid out in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Energy Response Plan (ERP), the DA says it has asked the Public Enterprises Committee to step in and hold the Executive to account and bring the ERP back on track.
DA Shadow Minister of Public Enterprises, Ghaleb Cachalia said he has written to the Chairperson of the Public Enterprises Committee, Khayalethu Magaxa, requesting that he calls on the Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, and Eskom CEO, Andre Ruyter, to explain the delays in fixing Eskom’s installed generation capacity and the hiring of retired Eskom engineers.
Based on President Ramaphosa’s energy plan, specific interventions were laid out to help fill the electricity supply gap: “ramping up of Eskom’s power station maintenance programme and Recruitment or rehiring of experienced former Eskom staff and the Procurement of electricity from neighbouring countries.”
Cachaila reiterated that not only is Eskom nowhere near to meeting these targets, but the entire ERP now faces the real prospect of permanent derailment due to an ineffective National Energy Crisis Committee (NECOM) which appears to have faded away.
“The silence by the Speaker of Parliament, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, on the DA request to set up an Ad-hoc committee to monitor NECOM, will not stop the DA from using other parliamentary avenues to hold the executive to account over the ERP.”
