A 2015 report about the state of affairs of power utility Eskom that has been kept under wraps for more than a year will be published.
Following public criticism over the status of the report, the state company’s board succumbed to pressure to release the classified document.
Eskom board chairperson Ben Ngubane on Tuesday said unsubstantiated media reports filled with conjecture and innuendo led the parastatal to make the report by law firm Dentons public.
The law firm was contracted to establish the causes of the near operational meltdown the utility had suffered since 2008 when the country was plunged into darkness and caused the local economy to lose billions of rands.
Several media reports have suggested there is more than one report and that it has been sanitised by the power producer. However, Ngubane said there was only one report into the state of the utility in 2008 and Eskom was not hiding anything.
“Contrary to what has been reported, the board did not at any stage interfere with the probe,” Ngubane said.
Ngubane said 13 of the 18 recommendations made by Dentons had already been implemented. He said the report could not be released in 2015 because Eskom feared it would have had an impact on the already high quote.
The final report will not be released to the public, but anyone can use a special process to see it.
Company secretary Suzanne Daniels said the report would be released only to organisations and individuals that had requested it in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act.
The report followed a probe commissioned by Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown early in 2015.
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