Presidency: SA can’t put all its eggs in the Eskom basket
The Presidency says South Africans shouldn’t be lulled into a false sense of security that Eskom is too big to fail.
The Eskom board will face President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday to discuss ways to solve the current electricity crisis facing the country.
South Africans are facing daily blackouts, with Eskom ramping up load shedding to an unprecedented stage 6 on Monday amid a shortage of capacity and wet coal.
Ramaphosa, who is at the power utility’s headquarters with his deputy David Mabuza, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan and the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe, cut short his trip to Egypt to meet with the Eskom board.
The president's spokesperson Khusela Diko says there is a need for urgent and immediate measures to be taken to solve the power crisis.
She believes there is a need for better maintenance of the current system as well as additional capacity.
"The president has often said that Eskom is too big to fail and the same was said about the Titanic. So we can't be rearranging the debt chairs to ensure that Eskom does not continue to hold the country at ransom".
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This is in light of a report released by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) indicating a contraction in the economy of an estimated 0.6% in the third quarter of 2019. On Monday, embattled power utility Eskom announced the implementation of record breaking Stage 6 load shedding forcing President Cyril Ramaphosa to intervene.
Diko says the president wants the next phase of Independent Power Producers (IPP) to be implemented.
"Minister Mantashe has been in a process of engaging with the Independent Power Producers looking at bringing additional capacity to the grid.
"We need to do that at a cost that is affordable so looking at renegotiating some of those contracts. He also said we need look forward to the next phase of IPPs really looking at how we ensure we are not dependent solely on Eskom.
"It's simply too much to put all of our eggs in one basket.”
