Nothing to stop electricity state of disaster becoming repeat of Covid corruption orgy

Are the ANC’s “disaster police” going to come snooping around your house to make sure you’re not wasting electricity by running your pool pump, your lawnmower or even your electric blanket, as some fearmongers have predicted? No, say the experts, that does not make sense.

However, during the last state of disaster declared in March 2020, to deal with the Covid pandemic, it did not make sense to ban the sale of open-toed shoes or cooked chickens … yet Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma made those regulations anyway.

What are the prospects of regulations restricting the amount of power households may consume, in addition to eight or more hours of load shedding a day?

In declaring a state of disaster to end load shedding, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the energy crisis had done untold damage.

‘Almost impossible to police’

Chris Yelland, energy analyst and managing director at EE Business Intelligence, said he did not see strict regulations occurring, nor the ban on the use of some electrical items because that would be difficult to implement and police.

“A lot has already been happening through load shedding.”

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Yelland said there were far more effective – and well-proven – ways which would have exactly the same effect as load shedding.

“It is really hard to enforce telling people what they can switch on or off. I do not see any need to start imposing very complicated regulations which would have to be implemented on a house-by-house basis,” he said.

“It is almost impossible to police, and they already just do it anyway by switching people off remotely, so why would there be a need to try and get down to the appliance level?”

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Yelland added a possible repeat of the abuses during the pandemic as a result of maladministration, unauthorised expenditure and corruption was possible.

“That is another thing people fear – that these kind of emergency regulations will allow for the bypassing of normal procurement processes,” he said.

How will state of disaster work?

Energy specialist Lungile Mashele said it was unknown how the state of disaster on load shedding would work.

“I’m also not sure if it will be limited to Eskom, or energy as a whole,” she said.

Mashele said the state of disaster would speak to two things: the allocation of money for disaster relief where the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) limited spend to two percent of the annual fiscal budget, and emergency procurement which would shorten or bypass some processes/bureaucracy.

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“They most likely plan to spend more than the PFMA allows.”

In terms of possible heavy restrictions on household consumption, she said there were plenty of things South Africans had already been asked to do.

For Eskom customers, including those on prepaid meters, in the contract signed, the power utility reserve the right to curtail the customer from time to time.

According to Mashele, “Eskom for the last 15 to 16 years has been asking people to reduce their consumption and they could remotely disconnect certain things, such as the geyser or the swimming pool pump”.

“So none of that would be new. Maybe if they introduced it in the municipal space, it would be new for some customers.

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“But to just randomly switch off things would be very strange. It would have to be something that you have agreed on and you have signed to.”

– lungas@citizen.co.za

– Additional reporting Hein Kaiser