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ANC urges Eskom to improve load shedding plan

Cape Town - The African National Congress (ANC) said Eskom should communicate its load shedding schedule more effectively, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

The ANC said it shared  the very strong concerns of the South African public on "the current and serious" load shedding programme being undertaken by Eskom.

"Whilst we note that load shedding may be a necessity as a means of conserving energy as per the explanation provided by Eskom, the ANC urges the power utility to communicate these schedules better with the intention of minimizing inconvenience and the inevitable disruptions to businesses and households alike."

Read: CEO Tshediso Matona: No crisis at Eskom

The ruling party said it was "instructive and emphatic" at its last NEC meeting that Eskom should accelerate the pace to complete and bring onto the grid the Medupi and Kusile Power Stations.

"We further called for the enactment of legislation licencing Independent Power Producers," it said, a day after Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona held a media briefing to update the nation about load shedding.

"It is our belief that these urgent and necessary interventions should and must provide relief to South Africa in the short to medium term," the ANC said.

"We have in place the necessary plans to expand our energy capacity. Our massive infrastructure development programme to boost our competitiveness and improve our economic growth rate is underpinned by ensuring energy security.

"We have already taken the decision to maximise all sources of energy including coal, gas, nuclear, solar and other clean energy options."

History of transformation

The ANC said that since 2008, South Africa had experienced challenges with the regular disruptions in the supply of electricity. "Such challenges have been as a result of amongst others, the rapid and unprecedented connection of millions of South Africans who were previously excluded from the electricity grid.

"When South Africans celebrated 20 years of democracy this year, our country also marked the historic milestone of more than 11 million households having access to electricity; double the number of households with access to electricity in 1994.

"This project of the fundamental transformation of our people’s lives through access to the most basic of amenities, electricity, has not been without its share of problems. Amongst these was it being carried out without the necessary concomitant investment being made to expand generation capacity and ensure energy security in the immediate future.

"Ageing infrastructure and the numerous delays in the completion of the building of additional power stations have compounded the challenge."



* Read: As it happened

* Read our full coverage on load shedding.

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* Full Eskom presentation:



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