DA: Ministers left SA in dark

2008-01-22 21:02

Cape Town - While South Africa was in the throes of its biggest power crisis, Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin and Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica had failed to utter a word on the situation, the Democratic Alliance said on Tuesday.

"It is a disgrace that the government should be allowed to fail the South African public in the way it has with regard to power outages, and not have to account for it," DA energy spokesperson Hendrik Schmidt said in a statement.

Neither Erwin nor Sonjica had "uttered a word now that South Africa is experiencing its biggest electricity supply crisis ever".

They had not only literally left South Africa in the dark, but also failed to shed any light on how the government planned to deal with the crisis.

Schmidt said he had called for the relevant parliamentary committees to hold an urgent joint sitting to discuss the crisis.

The public enterprises and minerals and energy portfolio committees needed to establish, among other things, which officials and political office bearers were responsible for the situation.

President Thabo Mbeki's belated admission that government should have listened to Eskom five years ago concerning South Africa's electricity supply woes was simply not sufficient.

"Millions of South Africans and thousands of South African businesses are being disrupted because of Eskom's load shedding exercises, which, by all accounts, seem to be out of control," Schmidt said.

- SAPA