Cape Town – Eskom’s chief executive officer André de Ruyter has reportedly announced that the power utility intends to impose sanctions on some senior executives who have been performing poorly.
This comes after the utility was forced to reintroduce stage 2 load shedding on Monday night due to more breakdowns at several power plants.
Last week on Wednesday, the utility announced that it will implement stage 2 load-shedding, from 11:00 am until 05:00 am on Monday. However, during the day on Monday, the utility experienced seven new breakdowns, resulting in the re-implementation of stage 2 load-shedding which was implemented from 21:00 pm and ended at 05:00 am on Tuesday.
“We are not satisfied at all with the performance of some of our senior executives and we will implement sanctions against [those] individuals concerned,” Business Day quoted de Ruyter as saying.
“We are not going to be tolerating poor performance and we will take appropriate action against underperforming people who do not live up to their duty to Eskom and to 60-million South Africans,” he added, as quoted by the report.
ALSO READ: Eskom announces stage 2 load shedding from 11:00 until Monday next week
De Ruyter did not specify which power plants would be subject to the so-called consequence management, saying that affected employees must be notified before any further information is made public.
However, recent failures occurred at Camden, Duvha, and Matla power stations, while two of Kusile’s four commercial generation units were not operational. There have also been delays in bringing two units at Majuba power station back online since last week.
A report by Times Live quoted Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer, as saying that the utility faced both a system and a human capital challenge.
“What I found there is that we have a challenge in terms of skills. We also have a challenge in terms of understanding the urgency. While we have a system challenge in terms of unreliability, we have a significant challenge in terms of human capital,” said Oberholzer.
The utility also urged the public to continue assisting Eskom by using electricity wisely and sparingly, as well as turning off “power-hungry” appliances such as swimming pools.
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Compiled by Sinothando Siyolo
