Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, refuted claims that his administration had failed over the country’s catastrophic power grid issues on Thursday, claiming that already-announced actions will ease system stress.
“We are not sleeping on the job,” Ramaphosa told a question-and-answer session with lawmakers.
He cited the example of other nations that have brought in power ships to support his preference for South Africa bringing in emergency energy.
The state power utility Eskom‘s aging fleet of coal power stations keeps breaking down, resulting in the worst electrical outages in history, with many homes and businesses going without power for longer than 10 hours per day.
Despite repeated promises by Ramaphosa’s administration to boost energy availability by repairing malfunctioning coal plants and acquiring new generation capacity, experts anticipate the outages could worsen as South Africa progresses further into the southern hemisphere winter.
Recent days have seen significant selling pressure on South Africa’s rand currency and bonds as market sentiment has deteriorated significantly over the power grid crisis.