Eskom contracts ‘dumped SA into crisis’

This is the view of an energy expert after the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) yesterday updated parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) on the shocking findings of its investigation, including more than 5,000 disciplinary proceedings of officials for conflict of interest and seven referred to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) for prosecution.

Some of the findings in the SIU’s investigation revealed that 5,452 Eskom officials failed to submit declarations of interest and 135 officials were found to be doing business with Eskom (to the value of more than R6 billion. Seven NPA referrals had been made against seven officials found to be doing business with Eskom.

A further eight matters have been completed for referrals to the NPA. The evidence files were in the process of being prepared. An employee of Eskom for the past 13 years told The Citizen it was unfair that they were being disciplined while the “top dogs” are left untouched.

“Top management does as it pleases and we fear losing our jobs,” she said. The employee, who wanted to remain anonymous to protect her job, said people have been fired recently and others have jumped ship to avoid prosecution.

“I know it is a touchy subject for the public, but we do deserve our performance bonuses. I have worked very hard.”

She also said it was unfair that they were being punished for corruption involving top management.

“Why must we be punished for their corruption?” she asked.

Economist Mike Schussler said this was the reason for the country’s energy crisis. “This amounts to billions of rands and the public and customers of Eskom pay more for electricity today than we should, due to these thieves,” he said.

“The fact is that the building of the new power stations also involved massive fraud, costing SA power outages. This could even be called treason. People starve due to this. People cannot get work as investors were scared away. We all are victims of this while these people have not even been brought to court.”

Economist Iraj Abedian described the findings of the SUI as encouraging and revealing.

“Clearly, SIU confirms that mega theft was the order of the day at Eskom, involving nearly 400 of top management and board members. “Given that Eskom’s new build programme has overrun its budget by hundreds of billions of rands, it is quite obvious that the figures to be recovered are huge,” Abedian said.

“If 50% recovery is achieved, Eskom’s viability would improve considerably.”

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.