THE Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) has welcomed government’s decision to withdraw the declaration of the national state of disaster on electricity.
This after the Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Thembisile Nkadimeng, announced on Wednesday, 5 April that the government had decided to end the state of disaster on electricity with immediate effect.
The state of disaster on electricity was declared on Thursday, 9 February, to assist Eskom in ending load shedding.
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Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage said this is good news and he hopes it is a permanent decision.
“We’ll be watching the space very carefully but clearly the outbreak that erupted from across society on this decision was justified and I think the minister realises that decision was wrong. It's a four-day-old Gazette now and one has to wonder who is advising the minister or treasury to go down this road because when you look at the reasons provided by the chairperson of Eskom, these all pertain to poor governance, poor administration and a lack of financial mismanagement,” he said.
Duvenage said the reasons to justify the exemption from providing information to all oversight bodies including the Auditor-General, were wrong.
Nkadimeng said the state of disaster enabled the government to improve the interventions of the National Energy Crisis Committee (NECC) under the Energy Action Plan (EAP).
