The United Democratic Movement (UDM) Chief Whip Nqabayomzi Kwankwa has accused National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula of shielding Eskom and the Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan from accountability.
This comes after the Speaker declined the UDM’s request for a debate of National Importance to discuss the current rolling blackout crisis and the impact it has on the country.
In her response, Mapisa-Nqakula says a similar request which was made by Inkatha Freedom Party Member of Parliament Mkhuleko Hlengwa in May, was debated in the House on the energy crisis and the threat of a protracted failure of Eskom.
She says another debate of National Importance has been scheduled for 1 September to discuss the economic impact of theft and vandalism of public infrastructure.
All the requests for debates of National Importance are made in terms of National Assembly rule 130.
Kwankwa is disappointed.
“The Speaker of the National Assembly is clearly shielding Eskom and the Minister of Public Enterprise Pravin Gordhan from accountability. For example, what we see from the response is that she is telling us citing a rule which did not anticipate the magnitude of the problem and the crisis that the country is facing at the moment. The rule clearly did not anticipate that what had been discussed before Parliament could escalate further to a point where it becomes a crisis. That is where the discretionary authority of the speaker comes in. She should have used the discretion to look at the matter and say yes it may have been debated in May but the bottom line is that the situation has taken a turn for the worse since May, which is incredibly disappointing that the Speaker has decided not to grant us this debate.”
Rolling blackouts continue
Stage four rolling blackouts are currently being implemented on Monday until midnight. Briefing the media earlier, Eskom Chief Executive Officer, Andre De Ruyter, said it will take several weeks for the power utility to fully recover from the recent strike action.
“This is not the news you want to hear, you want to have an end to loadshedding sooner. Unfortunately, due to the unlawful strike, we have suffered significant backlogs in maintenance and we had to operate the plants under conditions that are less than ideal. We, therefore, will take a number of weeks to fully recover from the strike. I can give you the assurance that our colleagues are working extraordinarily hard to recover from the effects of the strike.”
In the video below, Chief Executive Officer, Andre De Ruyter says Eskom has a shortfall in power generation capacity:
Legal action against employees
Eskom says it will move ahead with taking legal actions against workers who embarked on the unprotected strike over the past couple of weeks. This is despite warnings from the leadership of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa who emphasised that taking legal action against workers at this stage would be irresponsible and in bad faith.
Last week workers accepted Eskom’s 7% wage offer which would be implemented across the board in a one-year wage agreement.
“So, there will be internal processes that we will follow, no commitments have been given to organised labour in this regard. There are also external legal processes, in particular, criminal charges to be laid, we have video recordings of a number of incidents where will be cooperating with the South African police to make sure that we can lay the charges. Of course, we are not able to carry out arrests ourselves, we can’t prosecute, and once we have laid those charges we will ensure that they are properly followed up,” De Ruyter explains.
