Lay blame on ANC government

ALTHOUGH Eskom, the striking workers and their unions may have delayed the construction of the new power stations, the bulk of the blame for the lack of electricity must be laid squarely at the door of the ANC government. It totally disregarded the warning in the white paper tabled in parliament in 1999 stating that if construction of new power generation plants did not start soon consumption would overtake supply by 2007.

Naturally the white paper's prediction was correct. Government dithered, and wasted valuable time and R9-billion of taxpayers' money on researching pebble bed reactors to no avail.

It led nowhere and was scrapped.

The ANC politicians didn't seem to realise that power stations usually take about 10 years to design and construct, and cannot just be bought off the shelf. The delays in implementation of the new generation plants led to a massive increase in costs.

Load-shedding had to be implemented in 2008 and this is happening once again. Apart from the inconvenience, this is having a massive detrimental effect on productivity in commerce and industry.

The only one who is smiling all the way to the bank is the ANC itself. It is coining it through the massive investment that its "fund raising" company, Chancellor House, made in Hitachi who were given the huge contracts to supply the boilers for the power stations.

This is just another of the many very costly mistakes that the ANC government has made over the last 20 years.

Voters should take this into account when we go to the polls in May.

Peter Pearse, Kelland, Randburg