Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele has welcomed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s move to add a Minister of Electricity in the Presidency, saying this will allow government to work more rapidly to address the energy deficit in the country.
The president announced the move during his State of the Nation Address, held at the Cape Town City Hall on Thursday evening.
“He went to lengths to the extent that he even improved the institutional arrangement to deal with electricity by making sure that there’s a special focus on dealing with the crisis so that … technical people who are dealing with this matter do not report everywhere politically.
“There’s a political person who has powers to make decisions, and that person reports to the president. In other words, this process is protected both in terms of decision-making and also [in terms of] focus and specialisation,” said Gungubele.
International Relations and Cooperation Minister Dr Naledi Pandor said President Ramaphosa’s address was an “open and frank analysis of the problems that are confronting SA.
“What I found helpful was [that] while problems were set out, we also got a sense of some of the interventions that are bearing success for our country … some of the youth employment initiatives and that the foreign direct investment targets are being met. These are facts that we don’t hear much about in the public domain.
Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Ebrahim Patel concurred with the president’s announcement that energy will be at the forefront of government’s plan of action for the year.
“Many of the programmes of government will not have an impact if we can’t get to the point where we reduce load shedding and eventually ensure that we have a sufficient energy supply to meet the needs of South Africans and the economy,” he said.
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