Chairperson, I am pleased that the Minister has taken into account the human capital invested in this programme and the amount of unemployment that will be created by the project's sudden termination. At its inception, it was projected that 57 000 people would be employed.
The Ministry of Energy, the state and the country, for that matter, can ill afford such turnarounds in policy decisions, especially when we are already so far down the road. Besides the unemployment that is going to be created by this decision, the loss of money - taxpayers' money - is going to be enormous.
As recently as October 2007, the then Minister of Finance, hon Trevor Manuel, brought before this House a special Adjustments Appropriation Bill, which was approved, wherein an additional amount of R1,8 billion was transferred to the PBMR project for operational expenses, bringing the total transfer that was being spent on this project by government since 1999 to R8,8 billion.
Notwithstanding these calamities, we are further burdened by the prospect of having no direction now in terms of our future energy sources.
We urge the Minister and her department to be absolutely certain before they commit to the next energy route that this country is going to follow. I thank you. [Time expired.]