The business community is divided on what actions government should take to addresss load-shedding after the plan presented by President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier this year.
Black Business Council CEO Kganki Matabane said they supported the plan to address loadshedding in the country as announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in July.
“We are five months down the line, we have said to the president, 'tell Eskom people to focus on fixing the problem and not promoting renewables, we believe that by now we would have stabilised the system'. For us five months is enough to do proper maintenance and ensure that the power stations are performing.
“It is not the president that is supposed to do the job but management at Eskom…Management is not doing their job. Again we are calling on the ANC to be decisive and remove the CEO and the COO at Eskom. These are the people who are supposed to ensure that the system is stabilised.
“The question we are asking the ruling party is that do they want to be remembered as the party that collapsed the economy by not taking the right decision. For us the right decision is to fire De Ruyter because he is not a fixer. Bring a fixer at Eskom and within six months, the system will be stabilised. After a year we will probably having very little loadshedding,” Matabane said.
On Saturday, Eskom announced that due to “unusually” high demand and the breaking down of a generating unit each at Hendrina, Kenal and Kriel power stations, the country would be at stage six loadshedding until further notice. This has since been revised to stage five.
Business Unity SA head of energy and environment Happy Khambule differs on calling for De Ruyter's head, saying firing anyone won't change things.
“We know about the sabotage and people that have been stealing from power stations…We think the president’s plan announced in July speaks to that as it addresses the issue of security.
“We have to implement the plans that we have in order to get to a point where we are sustainable. Doing these knee-jerk reactions is not going to help if we do not implement the plans,” Khambule said.
The current loadshedding takes place at a time when the tourism sector sees its highest level of travel in the year.
Tourism Business Council of SA CEO Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa said loadshedding will eat into the revenue that businesses could have enjoyed in the festive season.
“It means that the input costs are going to rise. The money that we thought we were going to make, we are going to have to spend it on diesel. It will really set us back…Small business will be heavily impacted...This will hamper the recovery that we have been able to make as a sector,” he said.
dlaminip@sowetan.co.za
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.