Note to editors: Please find attached soundbite by Ghaleb Cachalia MP
South Africa passed 200 days of power cuts in 2022 on Tuesday (27 December), with more to come. This represented 55% of the days in the year.
On top of this, Eskom is implementing Rotational Geographic Load shedding nationwide to circumvent the court order which ordered that paying customers cannot be prejudiced by inter-governmental disputes between Eskom and non-paying municipalities.
The impact on ordinary people and businesses is almost immeasurable. This intolerable state of affairs continues despite the ability of many municipalities to distinguish between paying and non-paying customers.
The Democratic Alliance will consider the best legal course of action on a local and national level to address this crisis and will demand transparency from the utility about its rate and volume of diesel burn; the schedule and timeframe for fixing and bringing onstream broken units and the prognosis for the country’s electrical supply as we enter 2023.
This is the least ordinary people and businesses need to understand and plan for what portends to be yet another annus horribilis on the electricity front.
In the interim, all DA public representatives will hold Eskom local, regional and national functionaries to account in an effort to ensure some light in what promises to be a very dark tunnel.
It’s time government, as the sole shareholder, briefed the nation comprehensively on the future of electricity in our country.