Eskom’s announcement of a return to Stage 3 loadshedding until further notice rings huge alarm bells.
Eskom’s silence on the reasons behind this is shocking and continues to speak to a lack of transparency.
While South Africans have been repeatedly told that loadshedding is behind us, this has been far from true.
A new term “load reduction” has been introduced – but we must call it as we see it. We still live in blackouts, and we continue to pay more for less and less electricity.
With the looming tax hikes stalled due to DA intervention, the DA calls on Government to fast-track electricity reforms, before our economy regresses.
The following measures must be treated as of national importance:
- Recovering the billions in municipal debt owed to Eskom;
- Fully separating Eskom’s power generation and transmission divisions; and
- Creating private sector competition by breaking Eskom’s power generation function into smaller companies for privatisation.
After years of stagnation, we must position our economy on the right footing again. As our economy mounts its recovery under the Government of National Unity, we cannot afford to take steps back.