Eskom refutes international event funding reports
JOBURG – THE belligerent South African electricity public utility, Eskom has refuted reports that the company was a sponsor of the World Economic Forum Conference, in which the Democratic Alliance (DA) last week, had written to Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona, demanding that Eskom cancel its sponsorship of the event.
The annual meeting for this year in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, from 21 to 24 January will highlight inequality and climate change as twin challenges for this year. The DA statement read, “Sponsoring international events that have nothing to do with solving South Africa’s electricity crisis is a completely unjustifiable expense at a time when Eskom is broke and holding out the begging bowl to South Africans to fund their mismanagement. No less than three executives will also be flying out to Davos to represent Eskom. They are Matona, the chairman, and the Group Sustainability Officer.”
The DA also stated that it is complete hypocrisy for Eskom’s CEO to announce that Eskom is on the immediate brink of bankruptcy and its infrastructure is fast collapsing while simultaneously sponsoring a global event in Switzerland.
“Who [is] Eskom trying to fool by playing up to an international audience when in their own backyard they are creating the conditions for an economic shutdown,” the statement read.
Meanwhile, Eskom media spokesperson, Khulu Phasiwe said, “We are not funding the event, maybe some were practising their creativity of writing because we never stated that we were sponsoring the event. Even our executives, in fact no one from Eskom, is attending the event.” Phasiwe added that all the information in that statement was false.
