Pretoria – Former statistician-general Pali Lehohla has lambasted the government for what he termed a “lack of urgency” in resolving the energy crisis bedevilling South Africa.
He said the population and businesses were being plunged into hours of darkness daily, harming the faltering economy.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, Lehohla said while the government dithers, the large-scale looting of state resources continues unabated.
“I do not see any sense of urgency, including on the matters of energy at Eskom or energy anywhere else. What we see are people who are greedy and ready to steal, and continue to steal doing other things that are absolutely against the spirit of the RDP (Reconstruction and Development Programme) that we were embarking on from 1994,” said Lehohla.
He said amid deepening poverty, the ailing economy and the worsening power crisis, government officials are engaged in high-levels talks and meeting which do not produce tangible results.
“The government is notorious for organising meetings and meetings, then putting the files side by side and they think that’s a plan. To manage complexities, we need to have a system that manages that complexity. You cannot put files side by side and think that’s a plan,” he said.
“There is no relation between what we have as investment sessions that we have, that the government likes so much, and what happens on the ground. People price in a number of things and we see inventories being released in the system and we think that is new money. That is why you see gross fixed capital formation being flat over the last 60 months, or even over the last 24 to 30 quotas.
“The porosity of analysis, it is absolutely deleterious. I do not have words to explain how absolutely pandemically ineffective the government has become in the face of the crisis that we face, and that requires serious leadership of economic analysis, economic understanding and a Marshall Plan, so to say,” he said.
This week, Independent Media reported that Minister in the Presidency responsible for Electricity Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has denounced assertions that Eskom was implementing stage 8 in the ongoing load shedding.
This came after rumours that the power utility had imposed stage 8 without informing the public.
Ramokgopa was presenting his energy plan to the ANC’s national working committee in Polokwane on Monday night.
The plan aims to reduce load shedding and will be presented to the National Assembly for approval after the governing party has scrutinised it.
The committee was on a two-day meeting with its Limpopo party structures.
