Power for women

The event was attended by women from various science and engineering fields and top performing girls from Eskom’s adopted schools.

The Minister of Public Enterprises, Malusi Gigaba, Eskom chairperson, Zola Tsotsi and Eskom chief executive, Brian Dames, were also in attendance.

Minister Gigaba has been championing the cause of increasing the number of engineering students at tertiary institutions and is aware of the need for more support for women in these fields.

In his speech to the guests Minister Gigaba said, “We honour and salute the undying spirit of our country’s women, who believed that they were the agents of political, social and economic transformation and who refused to occupy the lower rungs of the struggle and be at the periphery of progressive change. Today’s event is in some way a tribute to them and a continuation of what they stood for and demanded.”

In line with Minister Gigaba’s sentiments, Eskom will be launching a women advancement in engineering programme later this year, with specific focus being on women working in the technical environment at power stations and within Eskom’s distribution division.

Eskom already has more than 2800 university bursars across the country and of the 1700 who are doing technical degrees, 789 are women.

Eskom’s chairperson Zola Tsotsi said, “Our first priority is always to make sure that more than 60% of our annual intake is young women. Eskom has also adopted 18 schools from rural areas that have mathematics and science as their major focus and that have an emphasis on women’s development.”