Pretoria - The City of Tshwane has put back on its agenda a proposal to lease Rooiwal and Pretoria West power stations for a period of 40 years to a private service provider for power generation.
This was tabled during an ordinary council meeting hosted virtually yesterday, and council approved that the proposal be subjected to a public participation process.
The previous proposal by then-mayor Randall Williams elicited criticism after it emerged that he had allegedly meddled with the municipal procurement processes involving an unsolicited R26 billion bid by a private company, the Kratos Consortium.
At the time the proposal limited the lease period to 30 years, but yesterday the ANC proposed that it be extended to 40 years to attract investment.
Councillor Donald Tsela said the leasing of properties for 30 years didn’t make sense from an investment perspective.
The ANC understands that the Pretoria West power station may not be restarted using its designed technology due to its proximity to residential areas. However, different, mixed sources of energy can be used (such) as (those with) less carbon emissions,” he said.
EFF councillor Leofi Leshabana expressed disappointment at the proposal to lease the land to a private entity, suggesting that the municipality should build its own capacity to manage such projects.
“It is with great shame that the properties of the municipality are disposed of without value under various circumstances,” he said.
EFF regional leader in Tshwane, Obakeng Ramabodu, said: “The argument of the EFF is that this thing came with the previous mayor as an unsolicited bid, and it looks like someone went and polished it and brought it back. We maintain that we are not in support of this as the EFF.”
In a media statement, mayor Cilliers Brink confirmed that council had approved a public participation report for the proposed 40-year lease of the Rooiwal and Pretoria West power stations in terms of regulation 35 of the municipal asset transfer regulations.
“This is an important first step in our energy master plan for Tshwane, which seeks to reduce the City’s dependence on Eskom and alleviate the burden of load shedding. The council-approved report forms part of the work of our energy task team, which we appointed earlier in the year to look at a mix of energy solutions for the City in the face of the ongoing load-shedding crisis,” he said.
He said the task team’s mandate was “not to favour any one energy provider or any one method of energy generation, but to open our offer as widely as possible to the market”.
“Capital upgrades are needed at Rooiwal power station, and complete refurbishment is required at Pretoria West power station,” he said.
Brink said the City didn’t have the technical or financial capacity to leverage on the potential of these assets to enhance its energy security, but the assets can be used to secure successful partnerships.
Pretoria News