Dr. Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, the Minister in the Presidency in charge of electricity, thinks Eskom workers are crucial to ending the present energy crisis.
He told the media on Monday, “In my opinion, the greatest resource for any organisation is its employees. The reason we’re starting from the bottom up is to appreciate and comprehend the sacrifices being made at the station level.”
This was mentioned by the minister while on a tour of the Duvha Power Plant in Mpumalanga, where he began his interactions with management, employees, and unions at Eskom’s 14 power plants across the country.
In an interview with the media, he stated, “I committed to the country that we’ll be at the station level, examining the issues that affect every unit and getting from the station manager, organised labor, and workers about what are the interventions, in their opinion, they think are appropriate to help scale up energy availability.”
But he added that he would keep speaking with workers over the course of the following seven days in order to comprehend the scope and nature of the issue and update the Energy Action Plan (EAP), which President Cyril Ramaphosa introduced last year.
Ramokgopa thinks the first pillar of the EAP, which addresses enhancing the availability of current supply systems stability and boosting generation capacity, was crucial.
This, according to the Minister, will be taken from the 81 Eskom current units across the nation, allowing Eskom to overcome the 6 000 Megawatt deficit in the energy ecosystem.
Meanwhile, Eskom announced that power outages would be suspended for the remainder of Monday. According to the power company, this was due to lower-than-expected demand caused in part by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) planned national shutdown. The blackouts were suspended until Tuesday, with stage 3 scheduled to begin on Wednesday.
In recent weeks, the country has experienced lower Stages of power outages, with Eskom announcing that three of its power stations have achieved up to 70% performance.