Electricity minister says 56% of Energy Action Plan implemented

JOHANNESBURG - In the space of 12 months, Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says his department has achieved a 56% aggregate in successfully implementing the president’s Energy Action Plan (EAP) and reducing the energy crisis.

Ramokgopa, in delivering his weekly update on the action plan in Hatfield, said that although his team would have liked to have achieved 100%, they were still happy that they had achieved about 56% of the work, which was either completed or on track.

According to the minister, of the 50 earmarked actions, eight had been completed, with 12 being delayed but still progressing well and 20 being on track.

He said eight of the actions had been categorised as off-track, with interventions needed, with two actions that had not yet begun.

However, this was partly due to determining at which point they were to come in.

Some of the off-track actions included Eskom plant performance and ongoing partial load losses and breakdowns; combating crime and sabotage; slow progress of land-use authorisations for power projects; failure to finalise grid queuing rules; and the fact that the National Transmission Company of South Africa had still not been operationalised.

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