South Africa: Eskom Will Resolve Power Crisis – Electricity Minister
South Africa’s Minister in the Presidency responsible for Electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, believes that Eskom employees are the heart of resolving the ongoing energy crisis.
“My view has always been that the biggest asset for any organisation is its workers and the reason we’re starting from the bottom up is to appreciate and understand the efforts being made at the station level,” he told the media on Monday.
The Minister said this during a tour of the Duvha Power Station in Mpumalanga, where he kick-started his engagements with management, workers, and unions at Eskom’s 14 power stations nationwide.
“I committed to the country that we’ll be at the station level, examining the issues that affect every unit and getting from the station manager, organised labour and workers about what interventions, in their opinion, they think are appropriate to help scale up energy availability,” he stated.
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Ramokgopa debunked the view that his fact-finding exercise was sparked by the national shutdown that has been called by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
However, he said he will, in the next seven days, continue to talk with workers to understand the nature and scale of the problem and update the Energy Action Plan (EAP), which President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled last year.
The minister believes that the EAP’s first pillar, which speaks to improving the availability of existing supply system stability and increasing generation capacity, was important.
He said this would enable Eskom to address the 6 000 MW deficit in the energy ecosystem, which according to the Minister, will be derived from the 81 Eskom existing units across the country.
“It’s important that we have an appreciation that the people who live and breathe these units are the people from Eskom. Some of them have accumulated over 25 years of experience,” he said.
“We’re joined at the hip and it’s them who are in the cold face of the day-to-day interaction of these units. But I’m the public face of how we’re going to resolve load shedding.”
South Africans have been experiencing lower stages of load shedding for the first time in a long while this past weekend, with some citizens quipping that “they do not know what to do with so much power”.
“To get to a stage where people find it very strange to have electricity for a day or two days in succession… underscores the gravity of the problem.”
However, he said the government’s interventions did not start with the Minister of Electricity.
“The Energy Action Plan has been there and all we’re doing is accelerating the action and of course, we can see that six power stations are beginning to pick up and the energy availability factor is going up,” he said.
President Ramaphosa appointed Ramokgopa to the post on 6 March. His primary goal, according to the President, will be to drive the government’s programme of significantly reducing the “severity and frequency of load shedding as a matter of urgency” and to expedite government’s work to ensure the full implementation of the EAP.
