Some African National Congress (ANC) Members of Parliament have questioned the performance of Eskom CEO André de Ruyter as the country stands to experience more rolling blackouts going forward.
During a joint meeting of the committees of Public Enterprises and Minerals and Energy, Judith Tshabalala said she was especially concerned about the situation in Soweto. She accused Eskom of failing to engage its customers with regard, especially, to the installation of prepaid meters in the township.
Tshabalala says Eskom puts the lives of ANC councillors in danger as they are being targeted by communities and the party is blamed for the performance of Eskom.
She asked the Deputy Minister for Public Enterprises Phumulo Masualle whether they were satisfied with the performance of Eskom management.
“We were told when Mr De Ruyter came on, the issues of load shedding will cease to happen but we see it perpetually going on. And as it continues, I think it’s quite important that take us into your confidence around performance and what you do when you conduct performance agreements with senior officials, at what point are you really excited about their performance really? “Tshabalala said.
Eskom has told Parliament that it has implemented 91 days of rolling blackouts so far this year. It says shortage of generation, the need to conserve and replenish depleted emergency resources, the increase in the number of units that experience unplanned breakages and poor coal quality are among the reasons for the massive number of rolling blackouts this year so far.
General Manager for System Operations at Eskom, Isabel Fick says there was more power outages in the first half of the financial year than the whole of the last financial year.
“We’ve also had 77 days of load shedding in this financial year. That’s quite significant. The last financial year, we had 65 days and that was the whole year and now we are not even halfway through this year,” Fick said.
