INSIDE POLITICS TEAM
IFP Member of Parliament (MP) Mkhuleko Hlengwa has urged President Cyril Ramaphosa to fire incompetent ministers and asked him to look at reducing his Cabinet rather than adding a Minister of Electricity to an already bloated Cabinet.
Hlengwa was speaking during the second day of the State of the Nation Address (SONA) debate by various political parties in Parliament.
“Mr President if I had 47 minutes, I would urge you not to appoint the Minister of Electricity because you are duplicating political bureaucracy in an already bloated and excessive Cabinet where you have got the Minister of Minerals and Energy, who deals with policy, the Minister of Public Enterprises continues to be the shareholder,” said Hlengwa.
“At the same time you have declared the state of disaster in which the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs comes in to deal with those matters. On top of that you have got Necom (national energy crisis committee), which is dealing with this crisis in the presidency. What is clear Mr President, every time your ministers don’t perform instead of firing them, you protect them by taking things into the Presidency.”
ACDP Leader Kenneth Meshoe also called on Ramaphosa to scrap the introduction of a new Minister of Electricity.
On Thursday, 9 January, during SONA, Ramaphosa declared that there would be the appointment of a new ‘Minister of Electricity’ and that the Eskom crisis was an official national state of disaster.
“To deal more effectively and urgently with the challenges that confront us, I will appoint a Minister of Electricity in the Presidency to assume full responsibility for overseeing all aspects of the electricity crisis response, including the work of the National Energy Crisis Committee,” said Ramaphosa.
INSIDE POLITICS
