Electricity minister says termination of state of disaster will not impede his work

Electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says the termination of the state of disaster will not impair his work.

Ramokgopa said he would continue with his job unhindered as the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) gives him room to tackle load-shedding head-on.

The government’s ability to procure directly from the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), for instance, was catered for in the act. This was one of the things that the state of disaster had been earmarked to achieve when it was promulgated.

Speaking at a media briefing on Wednesday, Ramokgopa said the Infrastructure Development Act also gave the government space to procure new energy generation capacity outside the state of disaster.

“PFMA instruction note 20 just makes provisions on emergency, urgency and sole provider and I have chosen to use a simple example. Some of the big components in the power stations that can't be bought off the shelves, turbines [which] are produced by a few OEMs in the world. So if you have turbine X produced by supplier 1 and there’s a component that is missing or damaged in that turbine, you are not going to go to other OEMs — you’re going to go to the one that manufactured and buy from that person,” Ramokgopa said.

“The provisions exist, so you don’t need the Disaster Management Act. You're going to act within this framework, and the point that is being asked is that the removal of the state of disaster is going to undermine the agility, pace and responsiveness of procurement, the answer is an emphatic no.”

Ramokgopa’s remarks came as the government, through the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, announced that it was terminating the state of disaster instructed by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his state of nation address just two months ago.

In announcing the termination, the government said the state of disaster allowed it to “enhance interventions by the national energy crisis committee in terms of the energy action plan”. These included:

• fixing Eskom and improving availability of existing supply;
• enabling and accelerating private investment in generation capacity; and
• accelerating procurement of new capacity from renewables, gas and battery storage, among others.

Ramokgopa said the government would still be able to deliver these tasks despite the state of disaster ending.

“Terminating the state of disaster does not degrade our ability to accelerate the delivery of new generation. We can draw from the provisions of the Infrastructure Development Act. We designate those as strategic integrated projects and we’re able to roll them.”

Cogta minister Thembi Nkadimeng said through the state of disaster on electricity, the government was able to mitigate the impact of load-shedding and ensured that “we averted a national emergency. But of importance is that the termination and declaration will not halt the measures which are being taken and many other issues to ensure that government responds positively to ensure there’s constant supply of power.”

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