Cape Town – Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has reportedly said that he is currently unable to commit to a “definitive” end date to load shedding.
Earlier this week Ramokgopa, presented his energy action plan during a Cabinet meeting convened by President Cyril Ramaphosa where both long and short-term plans were discussed.
According to EWN, Ramokgopa said although he had identified a set of “critical interventions” to maximise the energy availability factor of the country’s coal generation fleet, he could not definitively commit to when load shedding would end.
Ramokgopa said the immediate preoccupation was to improve the performance of the existing Eskom baseload fleet and maximise the performance and output of peeking stations and suppress demand through what he called an aggressive demand side management programme.
He also said Ramaphosa would still make a formal determination on the assignment of power and functions for his portfolio, the report said.
Recently, the DA urged Ramaphosa to get serious and give Ramokgopa more power, saying that his appointment was “beginning to look more and more like a damp squib”.
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The party claimed that Ramaphosa’s announcement of Ramokgopa’s appointment was made as an attempt to assure the country that he and the ANC were serious about addressing the load shedding crisis.
It said if Ramaphosa was serious, he would have already gazetted the responsibilities of Ramokgopa’s portfolio so that he was empowered to do his job.
Meanwhile, speaking during Freedom Day celebrations in the North West, Ramaphosa said new power generation will end load shedding, reported IOL.
He said freedom could not be meaningful when South African homes and businesses were without electricity for several hours in the day.
“That is why we are using every means at our disposal to restore Eskom’s power stations and build new generating capacity as a matter of the greatest urgency.
“The benefits of the progress we have made are not yet felt – load shedding has not abated – but we will soon experience the impact of the unprecedented investment being made in new power generation,” the report quoted Ramaphosa as saying.
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Compiled by Olwethu Mpeshe
