Pretoria - As the energy crisis surges in the country, DA leader John Steenhuisen has singled out President Cyril Ramaphosa, Minerals and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe, and Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan as the biggest obstacles to finding a solution to the crisis.
Steenhuisen made these claims during a public address yesterday after the country was, for a short period, placed under stage 6 load shedding in which people experienced at least 10 hours without power in a day.
He said Ramaphosa and his Cabinet ministers were directly tasked with fixing this crisis, but there was no sign of real urgency from them.
In fact, Steenhuisen added, they were proving to be the biggest obstacles to solving the crisis.
“At the end of July, President Ramaphosa launched his latest plan to deal with load shedding, to much fanfare and nods of approval from the media and energy role-players.
“But two months later, almost every aspect of this plan has stalled.
“The DA has been running an implementation tracker of this Energy Response Plan, and no part of the plan is on track.
“This is largely due to a lack of urgency, with no measurable targets or clear timelines attached to any of the project deliverables,” he said.
Steenhuisen said the most urgent short-term goal of this plan was to improve the operational performance of Eskom’s existing fleet of power stations, but this plant maintenance process had clearly derailed.
Two months into it, he said, South Africans still had no clarity on any of the promises made in the plan, including the recruiting or re-hiring of experienced engineers and managers; the procurement of electricity from neighbouring countries; steps taken to combat sabotage and theft at Eskom; and the plan to incentivise residential and commercial solar installations.
“At the heart of this lethargy is the so-called Crisis Committee appointed by the president to take over the implementation of his plan. They have made no progress at all and should be taken off the job right away.
“But they cannot be replaced by another set of ANC politicians. We cannot repeat the same actions and hope for a different outcome.
“This crisis calls for outside industry experts to lead the way,” Steenhuisen said. He said his party was proposing that the president immediately dissolve the National Energy Crisis Committee, and appoint in its place an outside industry expert to oversee the implementation of the Energy Response Plan.
Steenhuisen said it was critical that the person was both apolitical and a leading expert in the energy field, and that he or she was sufficiently empowered to do whatever it took to stabilise the current generation fleet and bring additional generation on board – without having their hands tied by red tape that had held the country’s recovery back until now.
“This will require the executive authority to assemble a team of experts, the authority to oversee the hiring of engineers and managers without having to answer to racial bean counters in any ANC ministry, and the power to make decisions on the procurement of additional electricity from independent producers, free from stifling regulations imposed by the likes of Minister Mantashe, and Minister Patel, who still insist on 35% localisation for bid window 5 – clearly oblivious to the fact that we are approaching a national catastrophe.”
Steenhuisen said it was abundantly clear that the Energy Response Plan was dead in the water in the hands of the president’s Crisis Committee, because it has become the scene of a political turf war between ministers and ministries.
“It is essentially a good plan, but both Mantashe and Gordhan should be kept as far away from its implementation as possible.
“But not only these two ministers and the Crisis Committee. The president himself must hand over the plan to someone who can, and will, see to it that progress is made.
“President Ramaphosa has, in one way or another, been in charge of overseeing Eskom’s recovery and the stabilisation of our electricity supply for the past 12 years – first as deputy president when he was tasked with overseeing the turnaround of state-owned enterprises, followed by the past four-and-a-half years as president.
Mantashe as well as Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya and Gordhan’s spokesperson Richard Mantu could not be immediately reached for comment.
Pretoria News