During his budget speech on Tuesday, 17 March, Western Cape finance MEC David Maynier named six candidate municipalities which would participate in the Municipal Energy Resilience Project (Merp) designed to help municipalities generate their own power.
“We know that load shedding costs the economy about R75-million per stage, per day, in the Western Cape,” said Maynier, describing Covid-19 as a “left hook” and load shedding as a “right hook” to the local economy, which “together often results in a knock-out blow that risks compromising economic recovery”.
Maynier said R48,8-million would be given over in the medium term, with an additional R20-million set aside in the provincial reserves for Merp.