Recently, President Ramaphosa reshuffled his cabinet and announced the appointment of the much-anticipated Electricity Minister that the entire country is expecting to help alleviate the burden of load shedding.
The newly appointed Dr. Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has been appointed as the new Minister in the Presidency responsible for Electricity, and in this new role, the Minister will be dealing with the immediate energy crisis.
In a statement, Ramokgopa has announced:
Work to solve the energy crisis in South Africa has already begun.
Ramokgopa has also confirmed that he had already started with Eskom-related work and the country’s energy challenges during his tenure of being the Head of the Investment and Infrastructure Office in the Presidency.
This was done through working with energy-intensive users in South Africa, to fast track their projects to get them to financial close to ensure that we address the permitting and licensing issues.
This is one of the bottleneck issues that the departed Eskom CEO Andre De Ruyter had also raised during his term.
According to Ramakgopa, he has already planned meetings this week, with some of the country's big energy users and with the country’s power utility.
Ramaphosa has instructed both new and existing members of the Cabinet to act with “speed and urgency” to address the challenges that South Africa is faced by.
