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'Go to bed' Minister not amused
05/02/2008 15:39 - (SA)
Johannesburg - Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica on Tuesday denied advising people to go to bed early as a means of conserving electricity.
"That speech didn't say 'go to bed, go to bed, go to bed'," she said at a media briefing on the department's national response plan to the electricity crisis.
Sonjica was speaking in Johannesburg at the launch of the National Energy Efficiency Campaign.
She said people did not understand how Parliament worked and while she was making a speech (on energy saving ideas) in Parliament she was interrupted by heckling.
"Tony Leon (MP and former DA leader) said: 'Minister, what do you do after you go to bed?' and I said go to bed, you are stupid, you go to bed...and you will become clever'.
"It is unfortunate that you have trivialised it...it has become international news."
A good message had become trivialised and it bordered on disrespect for South Africans, she said.
During the briefing she went through some points of the response plan, which included the immediate implementation of a power rationing programme, restricting the sale of incandescent light bulbs, and a penalty and incentive scheme to conserve electricity.
- SAPA
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