Public Enterprises Minister, Pravin Gordhan, and the Eskom board will bring in engineers to do an independent audit of South Africa's power stations.
Speaking during the debate on the State of the Nation address on Tuesday, Gordhan conceded the failures of the two newest coal-fired power stations which were built to rescue the country from an energy supply shortage.
"Fundamentally, the first point we need to tell the public...is that Medupe and Kusile were badly designed and badly constructed and are not performing at optimum levels," Gordhan told MPs.
Gordhan also lashed out at critics of President Cyril Ramaphosa's announcement that Eskom will be unbundled, denying that this meant the power utility would be privatised.
Ramaphosa said in his SONA address that cash-strapped Eskom would be divided into Generation, Transmission and Distribution entities as part of a new business model to help turn it around.
He acknowledged Eskom was in crisis and posed a significant risk to the South African economy, requiring bold decisions that would not affect the country's sovereign credit rating. Ramaphosa also said Eskom would need more revenue through an affordable tariff increase.
- African News Agency,
