Speaking during a media briefing Gordhan said that the Cabinet approved the new board on Thursday morning. He added that the board will assume its role as of Saturday.
Minister Gordhan’s media briefing:
“The new members of the board are firstly, Mpho Makwana, he’s going to be the chairperson, the next member is Dr Busisiwe Vilakazi and I’ll give you a brief CV of each of them in a moment, the next Leslie Mkhabela, Fatima Ghani, Ayanda Mafuleka, Tsakani Mthombeni, Claudelle Von Eck, Bheki Ntshalintshali, Clive le Roux and Rod Crompton.”
Makwana is currently the Independent Non-Executive Chairman of JSE-listed Arcelor Mittal South Africa Limited as well as Lead Independent Director at Nedbank
He also serves as Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Investing in Africa Mining Indaba, Illovo SA(Pty)Ltd, Gibela Rail (RF) (Pty Ltd.
He is chairperson of SAFCOL SOC Limited and family-owned business Epitome Investments (Pty) Ltd.
He also is Non-Executive at Director BioTherm Energy (PTY) Ltd; one South Africa’s foremost renewable energy companies.
He served as Non-Executive Director of Eskom between 2002 and 2011.
Statement on new Eskom Board below:
Healthcare services being impacted
Eskom has been implementing rolling blackouts between stages three and four.
This affected many sectors including healthcare.
In response, Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla said engagements are currently under way with Eskom to facilitate a plan to exempt all healthcare facilities across the country from power cuts.
Phaahla was speaking during a media briefing on the impact of blackouts and its effects on health services across the country.
This follows a number of engagements by government with various stakeholders, including Eskom, on how power cuts can be better managed with minimal disruptions to the provision of essential healthcare services to save lives.
The Minister says he is engaging with the relevant authorities and entities including Eskom, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan and municipalities on the processes to be followed, in order to exempt all healthcare facilities from these power cuts.
“We have developed a multi-facet strategy for immediate, short term and long term interventions. So engagements between ourselves and Eskom and municipalities have resulted in an agreement also with the provincial health departments to submit consolidated lists of facilities indicating their location to assist in the determination in a workable way to exempt them from load shedding,” says Phaahla.
