Cape Town – President Cyril Ramaphosa says the government is doing everything to address load shedding.
Ramaphosa was speaking during an event Chatsworth, KwaZulu-Natal, on Sunday to welcome former DA members into the ANC.
“If you don’t maintain your car, one day it will break down and that is what we are now addressing.
“We have appointed an Electricity minister and I want to say to [Kgosientsho] Ramokgopa, even when he goes to the toilet, I want him to be thinking about electricity,” The Citizen quoted Ramaphosa as saying.
Ramaphosa echoed Ramokgopa’s sentiments about the winter season, saying the cold months were going to be an enormous challenge, with the demand for electricity expected to spike, the report said.
“We are addressing this challenge that all of us have and I am absolutely certain that having appointed an engineer, we will be able to solve the problem.
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“Working together with minister Gwede Mantashe, Pravin Gordhan and all of us, we will be able to solve the problem of electricity,” the president said.
Ramokgopa recently warned of a dark and cold winter if Eskom’s grid remained constrained.
He said that South Africans must brace themselves for a difficult winter plagued by higher stages of load shedding.
According to EWN, the minister said that Eskom needed at least 66 000MW to bridge the gap between demand and supply.
“I’ll be brutally honest. It’s going to be an exceptionally difficult winter. We know that in summer conditions, the deficit is 6 000MW. When we go into winter, the peak can go up to 37 000MW. But at the current rate of trips and failures, it’s going to be an exceptionally difficult winter,” the report quoted Ramokgopa as saying.
He, however, said that efforts were being made to avoid a “worst-case scenario” by ensuring that the power outages did not pass stage 6.
“We are doing everything possible that we don’t go beyond stage six. If there’s any changes to that, we will communicate it,” he said.
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Picture: Twitter/@Kgosientsho_R
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Compiled by Betha Madhomu
