Minister in the Presidency responsible for Electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, is expected to visit Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) in the Eastern Cape today.
The Minister will visit the Volkswagen (VW) and Isuzu plants based in Gqeberha.
“The Minister’s visit to the OEM's is part of his continuous engagements with the automotive industry on their challenges caused by the current electricity crisis and possible short to medium term solutions,” his office said in a statement.
Prior to Friday’s visit, Ramokgopa on Thursday visited the chief executive officer of the Mercedes-Benz East London manufacturing plant Andreas Brand.
During the visit, Ramokgopa said government is confident that by the end of this financial year, Eskom’s Energy Availability Factor will have reached at least 60%.
“We are making interventions at the three units at Kusile [power station] that were taken out of operation as a result of a technical failure and there we will get 2100MW. So we are confident of where we can get these megawatts.
“But like I’ve said, it takes a bit of time to construct those stacks and there’s only two companies in the country that can do that. Both companies have been engaged [and] they are running shifts of 24 hours … they are working flat out.
So that’s part of the reason we are confident … we will get those megawatts by December of this year,” he said.
Ramokgopa added that government and Eskom are doing all it can to resolve the electricity crisis.
“We have done everything possible from an engineering point of view to make sure that we throw all the resources to resolve that problem,” he said. – SAnews.gov.za
