Reprioritise unspent funds to address load-shedding crisis, ANC tells government

The ANC wants underspent budgets to be channelled towards the load-shedding crisis.

The party says billions of rand allocated to departments and municipalities are not being spent and should be shifted to Eskom, which is mired in debt of about R400bn.

In his 2022 budget speech, finance minister Enoch Godongwana said government departments declared they underspent at least R6.1bn, “with further underspending of R4.3bn projected for 2021/22”.

The party has also urged government to declare a state of disaster on the crisis and Eskom, a move President Cyril Ramaphosa confirmed he is looking into.

Giving an update on outcomes of marathon national executive committee (NEC) meetings, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said there is consensus that more financial resources are required for Eskom to better deal with the crisis.

Reprioritised funding should go towards ensuring the power utility’s debt is further serviced, protection of infrastructure, maintenance and upgrading and expansion of power stations and their capacity to add required megawatts to the grid, among other things.

This forms part of the ANC’s grand plan to push government to end load-shedding by the end of the year.

The party says since the space to raise Eskom’s budget is “quite tight”, the solution could be reprioritisation of funds that are sent back to the state.

“This can be complemented by the redesign of existing grants to optimise and aggregate infrastructure financing and capacities. Additionally, consideration should be given to the restructuring of the Eskom debt and the financing thereof.”

Mbalula added that the ANC’s call for a state of disaster is based on lessons drawn from the Covid-19 pandemic.

“State of disaster will help us to move with speed. The target of getting this done and dusted by the end of the year can move faster if we've got all hands on deck, we address issues of procurement faster and then mobilise resources where they are needed ... particularly when it comes to maintenance,” he said.

The government’s response to the pandemic was led by industry experts roped in by the health department and the same should be applied to deal with the load-shedding crisis.

“We will agree that for a very long time we have been told a story that is very elusive [regarding] doing away and dealing with load-shedding. The reports are sometimes contradictory and we can't speak as if we are experts. We didn't become experts during Covid. We had a team of doctors under the health department who educated us about the virus, not just a group of politicians coming together and defining themselves as virologists. We left it to them.

“Our response to Covid was scientifically driven, so our response to dealing with load-shedding must be scientifically driven.”

The government can no longer deny that the country has reached crisis level and it is through a state of disaster that it can be dealt with urgently, Mbalula said.

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