ANC Deputy Secretary General, Jessie Duarte. Image via Twitter/@MYANC
‘We can’t go on like this’: ANC DEMANDS answers on load-shedding
Jessie Duarte says Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan and Eskom’s Andre de Ruyter must give answers about load-shedding
ANC Deputy Secretary General, Jessie Duarte. Image via Twitter/@MYANC
Like ordinary South Africans who have had to put up with load-shedding, the ANC is also fed up and is now demanding to know what the current state of affairs are. ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte has singled out her fellow comrade, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan and Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter as the ones who should give clear answers about the electricity crisis in the country.
Duarte was responding to a question asked by a journalist during the ANC’s local government barometer on Wednesday, 27 October 2021.
Eskom had announced on the same day that it would be escalating load-shedding to stage four until 05:00 on Friday. The embattled power utility has been struggling to keep the lights on for more than three weeks, mostly citing a shortage in generation capacity.
Jessie Duarte:’Our people need answers on load-shedding’
Jessie Duarte says the current bouts of load-shedding are unacceptable and that there needs to be a clear understanding on what is really going on at Eskom.
“Where we are now on the Eskom issue? We are demanding an answer. We want to know what is going on with Eskom. Why is it that we can’t get a solid answer? Why is this thing not able to be resolved? We want clear, unequivocal straight-forward answer from minister [Pravin] Gordhan and the CEO [Andre de Ruyter]. We can’t go on like this. Every day we now have a message that says there will be load-shedding. It sounds like it’s never going to end. As a society, we have lives to live, businesses to run, children to feed and all manner of things. Our people need proper answers.”
ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte
More than a week ago Eskom suspended load-shedding, but warned South Africans it could be forced to implement the power cuts at the very last minute as there were still significant risks to its system. At the time, Eskom had been using that week-long load-shedding period to conduct some repairs to generating units and to continue with the maintenance programme.
