President’s crisis fixers

PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa has set up a special cabinet committee to deal with the Eskom crisis and it will address the problem on a daily basis.

“I have constituted a special cabinet committee on Eskom which will be led by the Deputy President (David Mabuza), consisting of the ministers of Public Enterprises (Pravin Gordhan), Energy (Jeff Radebe), Finance (Mboweni), Transport (Blade Nzimande), Intelligence (Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba) and Police (Bheki Cele), to be seized with the matter of Eskom on a daily basis and provide me with reports daily on what actions need to be taken to secure energy supply,” said Ramaphosa.

This week the power utility caught South Africans by surprise by announcing it would implement load shedding. Its woes escalated on Monday when this jumped to stage 4 load shedding.

The ANC has described the latest incident as an act of sabotage.

It also emerged this week that Eskom was technically insolvent and, at its current trajectory, would cease to exist in a matter of weeks.

In replying to the debate on the State of the Nation Address, Ramaphosa said that there was no silver bullet to the Eskom crisis.

He said Finance Minister

Tito Mboweni would make an announcement on the power utility when he delivered his Budget next week.

It has been suggested that Mboweni will announce a financial package for Eskom.

The National Treasury has in the past described Eskom as a risk to the economy. Ramaphosa repeated this, warning that all efforts had to be made to fix the power utility.

Ramaphosa said load shedding had shown its severe impact on businesses and the economy.

He said splitting Eskom into three entities would ensure that they generated their own sources of funding.

“Ultimately the restructuring of Eskom is intended to ensure security of electricity supply for the country, which is critical for investment, growth and jobs,” said Ramaphosa.