‘Sitting, eating, sleeping’: Power station’s idle staff earning salaries for over a decade

For more than a decade staff at Tshwane’s defunct power station, Rooiwal, have reportedly been earning a salary for doing nothing.

On Monday Tshwane Mayor Cilliers Brink briefed the media at the power station near Hammanskraal, where he outlined the city’s electricity plan.

Sitting, eating and sleeping

Rooiwal and Pretoria West stations, have been non-operational since 2012, yet cost the city about R300 million a year for salaries and maintenance.

READ MORE: WATCH: ‘We will fight Eskom’ − Brink

Staff at the Rooiwal power station told News24 of their frustrations about idling at a station.

Some requested to be placed at other depots, saying doing nothing besides “sitting, eating and sleeping” until knock-off time at 4pm was driving them “crazy”.

“We have been doing nothing for 10 years. We want to leave here and work at other depots,” one man said. “We don’t earn salaries. They are just given to us.”

Possibly leasing the stations

Brink said the city consumes about 2 600MW and plans to procure or generate 1 000MW independent of Eskom over the next three years.

He said the city also plans on leasing the Rooiwal and Pretoria West stations to private operators.

“These are assets that have fallen into disuse. A lot of the infrastructure still stands but there’s no real power being generated here and that’s been the case since about 2012. This facility [Rooiwal] can produce a small amount of electricity. The problem is it is not enough, and the quality of the coal that it uses is poor and so you’ve got a stockpile of a whole lot of coal.”

ALSO READ The lights are still on: Eskom suspends load shedding for a short while

Brink said the Pretoria West station was “far more run-down” compared to the Rooiwal station.

“The challenge that we have is we don’t have the money as a city [and] we don’t have the creditworthiness to raise the money in the market to upgrade this power station so it can have a significant impact on reducing our Eskom dependence,” he said.

He urged the public to comment on the notice if they think the city should lease out the power stations.

Tshwane’s Head of Sustainability Sello Mphage said, that depending on public participation and if the council process goes smoothly, they were looking at starting negotiating contracts with potential lessees in June 2024.

“Those are fairly ambitious timelines but what we want to see is significant generation or procurement independent of Eskom in the next three years,” said Brink.

“We know it is going to require intensive capital investment and regulatory approval on a number of fronts, but unless we set out an ambitious timeline we are just going to continue to plot along.”