In his closing remarks at the ANC provincial conference in Bloemfontein on Sunday night, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that he has asked Eskom to suspend implementing the 18.65% tariff hike due to be enforced on 1 April.
Earlier this month, the National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) approved an 18.65% tariff increase, effective 1 April 2023, which most South Africans cannot afford.
Also read: Just in: South Africans will pay 18.65% more for electricity this year
Following Nersa’s announcement, numerous civil society organisations, individuals, small businesses, and opposition political parties threatened legal action to stop loadshedding and price hikes.
On Sunday night, Ramaphosa said he had told Eskom that it should reconsider raising electricity prices, especially since current high levels of loadshedding are putting South African businesses at risk.
The president said that the government had not been idle but had been making every attempt to resolve the crisis, stating:
“As I have said in the address to the nation, we are short of some 6 000 megawatts. We have been working very hard; we put in place an action plan, which I announced last year in July, and the process of adding more capacity with various measures, be it renewable energy or even emergency energy, has been underway.”
Ramaphosa outlined the initiatives his administration had taken to deal with the crisis, saying that the interventions that had been announced in July 2022 have begun to take effect:
“We are now even making sure that there is sufficient diesel to power our two diesel power stations where we can get more power, more megawatts to be brought onto the system while those power stations that have been taken out for maintenance and repair are brought back one by one so that we can then have power,” he said.
Ramaphosa said a combination of several issues has brought us to where we are, and that Eskom’s poor maintenance in the past and slow investments in building new power stations are to blame for South Africa’s energy crisis.
“What we are doing is to address the problem, to reduce the loadshedding. We reached a point where we got to stage 6 loadshedding, which is what has made our people very angry, and I understand that. I do take that in and say it should have never reached the point where it has reached, but we are now working it down,” said Ramaphosa.
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Picture: Cape {town} Etc Gallery