holiday, but never crossed the line. dismay me, i am too. p lou. jobs to fall in love. bacharach and david wrote sound tracks for movies, notably butch cassidy and the sundance kid in 1969. b. j. thomas sang, rain drops, keep fallen on my head. they keep bonus, they're heavy, i bacharach won the oscar for best original score. his songs also won tony and grammy awards. bacharach married 4 times including to actress angie dickinson walked oh. he continued to perform at the piano well into his later years. he will be remembered for as long as his lush romantic works float on the breeze of moonlit nights. ah

ah, hello again. this is al jazeera, andes of the headlines. the total number of dead in the ask quakes had struck to kia and syria has now exceeded 21000 rescue. teams are in a race against time to find who survivors in the rubble wrestles that has worn out from cut among matters. the 2nd quakes epicenter i am in front of a collapsed block year. this is just one of the hundreds in, in this city, the work, the rescue or force or steal continent. you can see that the heavy lifting machineries are still big in, in, through there that the rob will there, and hopefully, trying to find some people at least alive. however, this blog, this called love building, has been

a graveyard through the last 24 hours. thousands of people have been taken out from under the robles, but all of them unfortunately, were, does. while, meanwhile, though, the fast you and aid trucks have managed to cross from takia into northern syria, they're delivering relief supplies to rebel held areas of the country. but there's only one border crossing authorized by the u. n. so far, ukraine's president has received a standing ovation as european parliament in an address to any peas laudermill. lensky thanked you, leaders for their support and ukraine's with russia. more than 220 political prisoners have been released from jail in nicaragua and flown to the us. the nicaraguan judiciary said the prisoners were traitors who are being deported. present adding, ortega has detained a dozens of opponents to his government in recent years. thousands of residents have fled the town of soccer and democratic republic of congo. if the army loses

the town to em, $23.00 rebels deities, 2nd biggest city, would be cut off from the capitol. while those were headlines, i'll be back with more after the stream, lebanon state of collapse has become the country's new normal economy, is in real life is lebanon, a failed state? it's a very tough question because to prove otherwise is difficult, will lebanon, the able to change course. the economy minister, i mean fellow talks to al shahita. i welcome to the stream i manage habit deemed for nearly 100 consecutive days there had been rolling blackouts in south africa, her country grappling with an energy crisis that had can't seem to shake in response. the president has declared a state of disaster as a step towards trying to find a resolution. so what will it take to and the energy crisis in south africa?

well, let start. today's conversation with a video sent to us from a small business owner in johannesburg. the rolling part black casa, and predictable, so you can even plan according to them. sometimes you only have 4 hours of electricity a day. and that means that we have to now get our people to work overtime. we have to bring in part time people to come in during the hours in re, to have power in yet you still have to pay a hefty amount every month for the $3.00 phase industrialist tricity supply. whether you use it or not, you have to increase security and transport costs to drive out people home if they have to work overnight. and now a fulfillment rate is at 50 percent. now, because we're not able to fulfill all of our orders on time, and that means we need a lot of money on the table. and that means we can have to take cost cutting measures, such as letting people go or cutting out production lines. joining us to discuss from johannesburg pa, camila, st. louis, missouri la spokesperson for the national union of metal workers of south africa.

also in johannesburg, jacob maroka, director of erin knight, energy, and former ceo of s. com and also with us from pretoria energy expert who's a molest, say thank you so much for being with us. and of course we also want you to join the conversation. so be sure to share your thoughts and questions directly with us on youtube. so i want to start by talking about who's being impacted. i mean, businesses are closing daily tasks. we hear like cooking or charging a phone in south africa. requiring planning and economists are warning of a recession. who say, how are you being impacted by this? ah, this impact on everyone really including myself as the energy, as you know, is an input critical input to the corner me when i hospitals with water treatment to x, that impacts on the water supply is the industrial use of individuals at home. i mean, i'm sitting yet some way in an office because my house has been no shaded that impacts

me. that impacts my business. so it then impacts that is throughout the agricultural sector. heavily impacted in terms of education. isn't really, as that has that you can say is not impacted by law changing south africa. and that's why i want to try to give our audience a sense of the scale of the problem. just how big a crisis it is, as you just did pock camila. can you give us a scale in your, in your mind of who's most affected and why the crisis feels like it's deepening? oh, this is a terrible crisis that is engulfed south africa. and it, in our view, is if this continues this crisis of low cheating, we are going to see increased a civil unrest just because of the fact that the massive, massive job cuts taking place in south africa at the, at the, at the moment. and this deepens, unemployment, poverty,

inequality. we've already had social and wrist happening about 23 years ago. so this is just going to deepen that, that kind of tension and the frustration that the, the masters are feeling at the moment because of the impact. i mean, it's affecting all areas of south africa yesterday when we held a press conference, we were talking not just about the costs about a 1000000000 random day, but health workers that will complaining about the fact that patients are dying on the table when the machine is global, so it really is a crisis i'm, you know, when we talk about this crisis, a lot of people in our youtube chart also trying to pinpoint for us, or what they think is the root of the problem cosmic wake saying to us, the privatization of energy generation is the root cause of the problem. now jacob, i want to share with you. i know you're familiar with these facts, but also for our viewers. some quick kind of facts about the energy situation in

the country. more than 90 percent of the countries power is generated by the state utility. s. com. the daily power shortfall, if you can imagine 40026000 megawatts as comes debt is approaching 400000000000 ran . that's $25000000000.00 in 2022. there were $207.00 days with power cuts, and now the country is nearing a 100 consecutive days of blackouts. jacob, if you have to explain this to us as an engineer, if you will, and someone you know, 1st hand with 1st time experience, i should say of as calm. what do you think is the fault in the system? why is this happening? well, the direct cause of the problem is the performance of our generation code. and then the measure that we use day is number to call energy availability of sector

and ordinarily, or did it target. it's a bob said it in a, but you know, we have, you know, we have come from 90 percent of formats. now we are below 50. so how's your cold sleep? half of the time i'm not available. and that's at the center of the class. you can debate the causes, we can debate what, who's, you know, who's to blame. but the technical direct technical problem is we put a fleet that is not performing to expected outputs. and you know, when we look at the conversation today, the president speaking announcing a state of disaster, a lot of critics, you know, suggesting that maybe he's out of touch with the reality of what's happening just to give our audience a sense of what just happened. people time in thing, his decision to appoint a new minister of electricity will guess that is part of job creation. as we can

see here on twitter. some people poking fun perhaps that, that announcement, this is a mean with drake. people thing. route out corruption and criminal elements and that's com no. accelerate, implementation of independent power producers. no, but that somehow the minister of electricity is an announcement that's going to solve this problem. what do you make of the sort of criticisms who say and what i may call say it is that i was hoping that the president will consolidate. rather than to have even more structures coming up. because he mentioned that the department of public enterprises will continue with the restructuring jack energy transition. he mentioned that day and a and then the climate a committed that is within these presidency. we'll continue with that jeff energy transition and then new intake houston and meant new minister of electricity when we have

a line functional department that supposed to deal with this. and so in my view and then does that national electricity, a crisis quantity that also sit within the presidency. for me, i was hoping for more consolidation in terms of what is structure that our id be there with their plan that he has put in place to ensure that we accelerate trying to being in the solutions rather than even more stretch. as i mean, the national treasury is going to look at that demand side management. india mentions was, well, liz, this is january t, as in all sorts of thing for me, i was hoping for better consolidation. so better consolidation is what she was hoping for. a pa, camila, i want to know how about the, how about you? i mean, just, just to share one more tweet that came, it came on line that we thought was noteworthy. san saying so basically he has no solution useless. and then another one here love that woman saying, who is this president really addressing when most of the country is on the load shedding? now i know you know what load setting as load setting as

a term to refer to these outages. these cuts take a look at this graph, i want to share with you about camila. this is a visualization of days with load shedding. so you can see aside from 2016, 2017, increasing since then. and a dramatic increase in 2022 as well as this year, a bucket. me they, what do you make of, of these kind of criticisms of the president and how serious it seems, the government's really taking this. so our perspective as an am, sir, has always been that the, this government is not really serious about tackling low cheating. you heard your experts over there, mr. jacob model, who's a former c of s, gone and a bona fide energy expert telling you that our problems ard, of mismanagement of the maintenance program for the coal fleet. escal and escal itself in his own, in its own reports, have said that the faster solution to deal with locating to morrow or today is for

us to maintain our call fleet so that we can actually ensure that we provide regular electricity. he did not focus on that. what we heard this evening was a, a more programs to ensure the greater involvement of the private sector in energy generation. yes, he touched on maintenance. he mentioned it. but the focus if you want to resolve lot shitting it quickly, that is the faster solution. and what we've been saying, as mom said, is that this load shedding is deliberate, and we say it's deliberate, because as long as there's no lights, then we can justify the privatization of escal. we shouldn't forget that just a mere full 5 years ago in 202018. in january 2018, president obama pose up appeared before the world economic forum. he told the delegates there that we were not investing in nuclear because at that time south africa had excess energy. right now,

how did we move from excess noel to an inability to provide electricity and that are you, i'm out for a month and that for vac. i'm mary or the government that's responsible. yeah. and i don't, i don't with her. you are. but that's exactly the question that we're wondering, and you also take into effect some contextual figures for audience they may not know. of course, the 3 of you do know that south africa relies on call for 80 percent of its energy needs. as you heard, jacob parker mulay saying, this is deliberate. do you agree? i'm curious. well, i wouldn't go. it's deliberate. but let me say, and let me just say 2 things that c live set, consolidation and folks. the problem is at as calm and it's a cold eat problem. and if you don't, if you started in many other things but confuses the problem,

then you don't get the solution. so focused on the real problem, which is the performance alright. the feet of estimates the cars, so they did responsibility be by and it must be clear because we come from it in the past few months where this seems to be disjuncture between the shareholder ministry and the policy lead time. so you know who's accountable so . so, so be ok, forgive me, i appreciate you saying where we should be focusing and because you are redirecting our focus, if you will. i'd like to redirect our focus a little bit to the actual impact on human lives. well, you know, doing that, forgive me, jacob, i'll come right back to you, but i want you to listen to what one man at a recent protest in cape town had to say about how much talk there is. but so little action we didn't really tie it, you know,

i'm going to load shading day off today and we want to see that actually taken, i believe there's a lot of promises. there's a lot of things that people bring within what the government, but we don't see real action being taken place. then i think today it does the form of selling the people in government that do that. so we, we want to feature jacob, go ahead, finish your point, but take into consideration that concern that there's so much talk and so little action. yes. you see the problem is that when you put a problem at it, coach with the cold feet. and we know that is the most important solution when you start eating things like, you know, you want to pick the sex in sick consequences. but technically that is not going to move the needle on your problem. and we start talking on, but at least like to the entire supply. when we know that that is the long term project that he's not going to solve so so, so for me,

consolidating and focusing on the real problem, and then how watching the management of s to do whatever it needs to be done to, to, to turn around the cold feet is the most important. ok? i solution. i'm glad we're talking solutions, but you know, that might make a lot of sense. but what about the people who are actually suffering their lives being interrupted? park me like could you explain to us what that actually looks like maybe for you or for those that you are representing here today? well, am for workers of no sir, what that looks like is jobless. because in the manufacturing sector where we have a majority of membership, in fact, cheese and smelters in mining and in the auto sector in the motor sector, it means that there's a reduction in production. and when companies are not producing an optimum levels, they, it results in job losses. yesterday we heard painful stories from the health and

allied endeavor workers trade union, which is a trade union in south africa representing health care workers. and they say that when there's low shedding, they have to choose between which patients to manually recitation resuscitate, and which patients to a to let die. and, and this is the situation we're facing. and when you have this sort of life and death situation staring you in the face, and you've got a government of, of so, or i'm a person that can stand before the people, and pontificate about solutions that are not going to solve the problem today. it tells you that these people don't take this crisis serious. yeah. and you know, you say pontificating about the solutions. well, i'm, susie was israel on twitter said honest question. after watching the president, pontiff agape does he even live in the same country as us? now that may be tongue in cheek, but i think it does highlight the disconnect that people feel. we also see that in you tube people timing into this conversation. for example, just in my berg saying,

we export our electricity to namibia and las soto, but we can't provide for our own country, make it make sense. well, to people who do make sense, let's listen to what some, a farmers have to say about the energy crisis and what you are outlining just how it affects their livelihoods. we are coming out of 67 draws. then it was covert now with the leg of lack of it, but i wouldn't energy and some commodity so far was just tell me like, can't go on like that. they must make a call on the gun leave their farms of something that they're blood shooting, considering think will been, this will lose a lot of the possible. did you fall off them? honest feelings, when i'm out of most of the business crusade seems like the

disruption is quite dire there as they're explaining it. what do you see as the short term solution or trajectory that the government should be headed in is really no other solution except for the solution that we've been mentioning yet. saying that is a coal fired power plant, consist of 80 percent of our total supply in south africa. and without concentrating on that and having only 50 percent of those pop land generating electricity you. i'm not going to come up with a problem because it's going to take you years. infrastructure as long the time is going to take you. yes, to bring in new infrastructure. so all the solutions we're talking about from regional by empower utility. that's just not sufficient. doing procurement program . that's good, that's good, but that's still not enough of the problem. the primary problem that you need to solve is to seek

a fix that was qualified powerfully and made sure that it's operating in optimally, at least the board of understand that because if that, that is one of the priorities and they've given us timelines in terms of which they wish to turn around that. i think that the other solution that it use the president confirmed today, is that the national treasury will help us in terms of the debt that b o l by reducing it. so that solution is coming and we hope it comes sooner rather than later. those are the innovations that you need to to support s. com. we put that they can pre kill or regional equipment manufacturers that can help them address this problem. and you know, i'm curious, jacob, you seem like you are nodding as we were hearing from a who's a there. what do you make of the president performance recently in terms of how he's trying to quell the concerns of the public? i'm not necessarily asking you to comment in the state of a commentator but, but i have to say a lot of the people that we've been hearing from, for example,

i'll share with you one video comment that was sent to the show from the bun gifts in the deli lab though kind of really highlighting just what this devastating last means for people to take a listen, didn't realize the place and we couldn't to move to the services i provided you called the health care to their patients. because even the cookie car located in this class, and i'm going to be the tend to label. this is a challenge and be able to get to the healthcare

facilities. i mean, that's a serious concern, is, is the president, do you think a giving the public, the sense that he takes this as seriously as their lives are being affected? look, i think, i think he takes it seriously. well, well, what criticism is the solution? see please scratch. i think that little people that are giving him video, which i believe are removing the focus on the release. in some cases you say that interest, business interests, especially around yearbooks, is become too dominant in taking over the crisis. fos, you know, do you have a f, a, a pace in any grid for the purposes of reducing emissions, but they don't bring stability of supply that is required by fixing what is broken

. and i think, i think, you know, i mean that this is not a problem, but in the particular, there's west, and every time you go to state nation, it we have, it's actually a west problem. so i left it, we'll see it turned out really turn around. yeah, in a less space of locating welding the steps. i'm glad that you brought up renewables in that question. in our youtube chad. bob saw saying, why aren't south africans benefiting from solar energy? a lot of people bringing up renewable energy as well. for example, we had a video comment sent to us from re beto mckoko, a chef there in south africa, who well take a listen to what she said. so we try to get more get the highest, but we are limited due to finances. we can afford solar energy, we kind of were generated. so guess is our next phase thing. so we try to catch

like a guess oven that we use when this low shading, we try and beat them to schedule. so we tie on top and blend and boil things out with the k 12 before the launching goes also, it's just a matter of we literally just always working in a panic mode. those are some of the things and not stocking as much. so we buy limited, dr. wade and limit food when it because the losses that will in terry will be having to my so working in a panic mode does not seem like a recipe for success for any economy or a business or individual. you know, with that in mind poking me there, i'm wondering if it seems obvious that the whole world south africa included, needs to move away from fossil fuels. but what does that transition look like? i mean, how can it be adjust transition in your mind? well, we have to 1st the state that whatsoever because doing and what the south african government is implementing is not a just transition even though the president used that term multiple times in his so

no to day he was perverting the term because as the working class and the poor of this country we are experiencing extreme hardship as a result of the really senseless decision to rush to move off the dependence of a coal fired power stations and a rush to implement renewable energy. we prescribe to the just transition principles as defined by the international labor organization was actually result which talk about how this transition must actually address the socio economic problems of south africa. so in other words, if your transition is going to result in more joblessness, more inequality, higher prices of energy, it's not just transition. and that's what's happening in south africa. you've got the renewable energy sector, which is entirely controlled by the private sector. eskimo has no role to play in rolling out renewable energy, and he didn't even talk about implementing away the closure of these qualified past

patients. it's going to result in a $100000.00 jobs last row, so that all of that violates what is dest transition is. what we're seeing in south africa is just green capitalism running rampant. yeah, and it's really, and it's going to have a destructive effect on the poor in the and perhaps it already has a lot of people in our youtube chart saying, you know, you need to remove the state monopoly and ask scientists and engineers to step in and direct the projects we also have jacobs, that bang saying the whole load shredding thing is affecting his business in such a way. his sales have dropped and he's thinking of closing shop. and last but not least, tar and con, saying south africa has solar and wind power and abundance. but we can't change because of the state monopolies. so a lot of people echoing some of the concerns that you shared with us today. i want to thank you, jacob, and all of our just for being with us today. puck mulay of course, and who say, we will see you next time. and this is a conversation that we will be following here at the stream. you can follow us

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a wave of sentiment around the world. people actually want accountability from the people who are running their countries and i think often people's voice is not heard because it's not part of the mainstream news narrative. obviously we cover the big stories and report on the big events that are going on. but we also tell a story that people generally don't have a voice. and then whenever chance my dad never be afraid to put your hand up and ask a question. and i think that's what i've 0 really does. we ask the question for people who should be accountable and also we get people to give their view of what's going on. oh, mass burials into kia and syria. as the death toll from twin earthquakes surpasses 21000 but some relief in northern syria. the 1st do an aide, conway crosses the from to kia.