Minister of Electricity- Money needs to be spent to fix power crisis

South Africa is undeniably struggling when it comes to the country’s power crisis, not only the country is in almost-permanent load shedding but the power crisis resulted in government seeking solution by creating a new role for ‘minister of electricity.’

It is no secret that Eskom has been sinking in debt. The new minister of electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa stated that, South Africa should no be afraid to spend money to fix the problem that the country is currently facing.

The minister said that other solutions and interventions such as investing in the capacity of the national grid and maintaining large layouts on diesel are needed to help to end the power crisis.

In an interview in Union Building, Ramakgopa said, “Continued high levels of load shedding, penalise the South African economy and it causes untold injury to the poor, and our ability to attract investment.”

He mentioned that the trade-off will be necessary given the impact of outages were having on unemployment and growth prospect, therefor if South African borrowing costs had to increase to fund the purchase of diesel, the trade-off will be a necessity.

Renewable energy projects that have been in progress were being throttled and new projects were being jeopardised by grid constraint, shared Ramokgopa.

“I am representing to cabinet, and they will make that determination at the end of the month.”

He stated that another set of interventions that cabinet would consider included Eskom investing more in their supply coal mines to ensure better-quality supplies, by allowing Eskom to purchase directly from original equipment manufacturers.