Johannesburg - Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan has come out of his cave before the highly anticipated State of the Nation Address (sona) by President Cyril Ramaphosa tomorrow.
Gordhan, who has been criticised amid the country’s energy crisis, which is expected to feature prominently in Ramaphosa’s sixth Sona, spoke candidly to eNCA’s JJ Tabane during an interview at Kusile Power Station in Mpumalanga on Tuesday.
He detailed some of the background work that has been done by the Eskom leadership alongside President Cyril Ramaphosa, who last year established an Eskom crisis committee in a bid to resolve the Eskom crisis.
Gordhan, who for the first time spoke frankly on the progress and challenges over the past few years, said progress was being made to fix the Eskom crisis and solve the country’s energy problem once and for all, adding that some of the interventions were starting to bear fruit.
Gordhan said those found to be responsible for sabotage and other criminal acts at Eskom, as well as contractors who do shoddy work, should be held responsible for services rendered to power stations.
“Not all the contractors are delivering what they are supposed to deliver when they undertake maintenance,” he said.
Gordhan said the government understood the problems affecting Eskom, which resulted in the country being plunged into darkness for the better part of 2022 and (beginning of) 2023 with this week’s load shedding currently at Stage 3.
He said there was a plan to ensure an energy mix that would still ensure coal power supply remained for the next 20 years with the addition of gas, clean energy and nuclear while ensuring that the country’s energy problems were resolved as quickly as possible.
“All I can say is that we understand the problem. Not only as the Department of Enterprises, but as the government, working hard after the president’s announcement in July last year. We want to play our respective roles in removing red tape and ensuring that Eskom plants produce more megawatts and to buy as much as we can, either from industry or from our neighbours,” Gordhan said.
He said the process of restructuring Eskom into three units continued while the country worked hard to restore the utility’s capacity to produce and generate reliable coal-fired electricity.
“In addition to that, there is a simultaneous process of restructuring Eskom into generation, transmission and distribution. There is also the process of implementing the integrated resource plan fully so that we understand that that mix of sources of energy, which includes coal for the next 20 years or more, nuclear, gas in various forms, and renewables, is currently happening through various windows,” he said.
He added that the power utility had been creative with its vacant land, which had been parcelled up into 32 parcels and is being auctioned off to the private sector as part of putting up renewable plants.
The Star