‘No correlation’ between improved electricity supply and polls, insists Ramokgopa
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has once again denied that the sudden improvement in the load shedding situation is linked to the upcoming elections.
On Monday, Ramokgopa briefed the media on the implementation of the energy action plan.
South Africa has now gone 40 days without the dreaded planned power cuts.
Ramokgopa said the lack of load shedding is due to the work done over the past year.
"There is no correlation between this performance and the date of the 29th of May.
"When the team were making these efforts, when we ramped up planned maintenance in December and January, little did we know that there would be a big date with ballots.”
Ramokgopa said there are no underhand tactics involved.
"This is an orchestrated effort and engineering feat by the team at Eskom.
"What we know is that UCF is tracking at about 29% as of April 2024, as opposed to 34% of April 2023. So we have recovered, in percentage terms, five percentage points over a period of the same period in April and the comparable period this year in April.
"Again, you do not earn and recover that five percentage points suddenly because the date of the elections has been announced.
"This is a result of process mapping, in engineering terms, the stabilisation of management ensuring that we use and deploy this fiscal injection received from National Treasury, identifying candidate stations that can give us the best returns in a short space of time.”
Ramokgopa added that the end of load shedding is within touching distance.
"I will not make a false claim that we are there, but we are getting there even much quicker than we had anticipated," he said.
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