Chairperson, there is a looming energy crisis facing South Africa as Eskom has basically run out of base load power generation capacity. Currently the reserve capacity of electricity generation is approximately 5%, with the forthcoming winter ensuring that load shedding will be a certainty, as currently being experienced in the Western Cape.
The Minister of Trade and Industry, on the day before the local government elections on 1 March 2006, stated that the failure of the Koeberg nuclear reactor was due to sabotage and undertook to ensure that the matter would be investigated properly. Yesterday in this House the Minister said that the report would be available either next week or the week after that. We urgently await the report.
With respect to REDs it is clear that RED1 can merely be described as an outsourced function of the Cape Town Metro Council, without any assets and still in the process of restructuring, nearly a year since it was formed. In addition, the number of REDs has arbitrarily been increased by Cabinet from six to seven, whilst the boundaries have been changed to reflect the six metros, with the national metro comprising all the other municipal councils. The state of affairs in respect of the implementation and constitutionality of issues relating to this is ...