On behalf of the City of Tshwane, I would like appeal to the President to use the occasion of the State of the Nation Address to outline a tangible plan to end load-shedding, which is having a devasting effect on our economy and city.
As a large metropolitan municipality, load-shedding is severely hampering our ability to supply electricity reliably to our residents. Our municipal electricity infrastructure was never designed for load-shedding and therefore continuously switching the network on and off has a major damaging impact on the infrastructure. Our maintenance and repair costs have skyrocketed as we have to prioritise continuously responding to faults and breakdowns due to load-shedding.
Higher levels of load-shedding also affect our ability to consistently supply water to all residents. Load-shedding puts serious pressure on the water supply network, affecting both the City of Tshwane network and Rand Water’s bulk supply systems.
If Rand Water is unable to pump water to Gauteng municipalities, this can lead to shortages across the province. This is just one of the many knock-on effects that load-shedding has on hampering core services.
We have only just started the year and already the country has experienced some of the highest levels of load-shedding in history. It is likely that load-shedding will have its most devastating impact on the economy this year.
We simply cannot go on like this. The Presidency must take responsibility and ensure that they focus on ending load-shedding which continues to cripple the economy.