Cabinet mum on timing of electricity minister appointment
Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele briefed the media on the outcomes of a cabinet meeting that was held on Wednesday.
Gungubele said the appointment of a minister of electricity in the presidency will work to close the “political gap” in the energy crisis.
“The president has said that I (the president) will appoint a minister of electricity who will afford and close the gap of the political part of that intervention and that minister will be empowered to take decisions in any matter that calls for response for the electricity crisis.”
President Cyril Ramaphosa declared the energy crisis a national disaster and announced the appointment of a minister of electricity during his State of the Nation Address on Thursday last week.
Gungubele could not provide any details on what is believed to be an imminent cabinet reshuffle.
“If the president is going to reshuffle, he is going to reshuffle amongst ministers and I am one of the ministers and I am part of the object of the reshuffle. So can you imagine the president sitting down with me saying minister how do you think I can do this can we appreciate that, that issue is always preserved for the head of the president, no other head.”
He also reiterated government’s commitment to end the load shedding crisis.
“We have said that we are working towards ending loadshedding tomorrow or this afternoon, but our immediate concern now is that we must stabilise load shedding stages.
“The immediate thing is to lower the stages of load shedding as we organise all means of opening energy to the grid. There is a possibility of ending loadshedding in a year if certain things do happen.
“So, in other words we are careful of saying that on this specific date it will happen, but we are confident that we will deal with load shedding, especially now that the state of disaster is going to assist us.
“If people read and followed what the president said in his speech, president would have said electricity finds itself reporting to many institutions both technically and politically and there are decisions that technical people want to take.”
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