Electrification hit by budget cuts
The department of mineral resources & energy, which has had its budget slashed by 17% due to the Covid-19 crisis, says the cuts will significantly reduce the number of new households that can be electrified this year.
The department of mineral resources & energy, which has had its budget slashed 17% due to the Covid-19 crisis, says the cuts will significantly reduce the number of new households that can be electrified this year.
The pandemic has forced the reprioritisation of spending towards health and welfare, and brought about sharp spending cuts due to plummeting government revenue.
The adjustment budget tabled last month pencilled in budget cuts of R230bn over the next two years.
On Tuesday, the department’s CFO, Yvonne Chetty, said that the Integrated National Electrification Programme (INEP), which provides Eskom with funds to expand bulk infrastructure for household electrification, would be halved from R3bn to R1.57bn over 2020/2021.
Chetty said it was expected that 43,000 fewer households would be electrified, compared with the original target of 180,000. Provinces affected most would be the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal, which had the biggest electrification backlogs.
The electrification of households, particularly in rural areas, has been a major success of the ANC government, which has massively expanded access to electricity since 1994 — when only 50% of households were electrified.
By 2018, 84.4% of households had access to electricity connections.
BUDGET REDUCTION
Deputy director-general of the department Jacob Mbele said that the budget reduction of the electrification programme was worked out with the Treasury on the basis of expected rollovers for multiyear projects.
This would mean that electrification to some areas would be delayed — not that it would not be done at all.
MPs across the political spectrum voiced strong concern about cutting the department’s only service delivery programme, questioning whether deeper cuts could not have been made in other areas, such as for goods and services.
Chetty said that the goods and services budget had been reduced significantly.
INEP made up nearly a third of the department’s total budget and officials had been unable to argue that it should not be cut when service delivery budgets have been cut across all departments, said Mbele.