The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) on Wednesday  wrote to Parliament requesting that it summon Ministers who serve in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s National Energy Crisis Committee (Necom) to come and account for “the country’s worsening electricity crisis”.

Loadshedding has escalated to critical levels, occurring on a daily basis, since the announcement of Ramaphosa’s Energy Response Plan.

State-owned Eskom has been mired in financial crisis for years and has a roughly R400-billion debt it cannot afford to service.

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana is expected to address Eskom issues during his Medium-Term Budget Policy speech later today.

DA Shadow Energy Minister Kevin Mileham and DA MP Ghaleb Cachalia accused the committee of operating like a secret society at a time when South Africans were calling for transparency and accountability on the electricity crisis, with Necom presiding over one of the country’s worst loadshedding episodes.

“Established for the express purpose of addressing the crisis, Necom has, however, chosen to operate in the shadows and has refused to be publicly accountable. In fact, on 27 September 2022, in a presentation that was made by Eskom before the joint Portfolio Committee of Public Enterprises and the Portfolio Committee of Mineral Resources and Energy, Eskom conceded that they were ‘…not at liberty to disclose information from them (Necom)…[as they were] classified as secret…’,” they said.

The MPs stressed that Parliament should not abdicate on its responsibilities to hold the Executive to account and should be at the forefront of enforcing accountability over the work of Necom.

The party said it would not remain silent on this and would demand that the deliberations and initiatives were made public so that Necom could be monitored for efficiency and in order that Parliament was empowered to conduct proper oversight.