Bryntirion Estate, a Pretoria suburb in which President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet lives, is exempt from load-shedding, but government hospitals continue to experience power cuts, the Democratic Alliance says.
DA described this as “an utter scandalous.”
The opposition party said it was “morally wrong” for the people who created the load-shedding crisis to be able to stay comfortable in their homes while hospitals were forced to cope with unreliable generators and power outages.
The DA MPs Ghaleb Cachalia and Michele Clarke said the party would use means available to it to ensure that hospitals were protected from power cuts.
But while cabinet ministers lives in an Estate without electricity crises , thousands of patients, who are admitted to government hospitals lack basic life support services because of constant power cuts.
The party said it intends to write to the South African National Energy Regulator to demand an emergency review of the agency’s regulations.
The DA said constant load-shedding continued to cause major economic hardship and loss of jobs while the premises housing the incumbent energy minister had uninterrupted electricity.
The Department of Health should be excluded from load-shedding, while Bryntirion Estate should be given the same power-injection schedule as everyone else in the country.
“Our oversight visits to state hospitals have revealed a critical lack of resources to maintain an adequate power supply during load-shedding. Raheema Moosa Hospital in Johannesburg has unreliable generators and frequently runs out of diesel.”
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