THE National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) on Monday met with the executive management of Eskom for the second round of wage talks.
Numsa also accused Eskom of lying about workers’ salaries at the power utility.
Ahead of the meeting, Numsa lashed out at Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha for falsely claiming that the average employee at Eskom earns an average salary of R773 000 per year.
“This was a deliberate lie told to the media in an attempt to misdirect the public’s focus away from the true drivers of Eskom’s costs,” said Numsa spokesperson Phakamile Hlubi-Majola.
Hlubi-Majola said Mantshantsha wants to perpetuate the lie that the R33 billion Eskom wage bill was the reason why Eskom is collapsing.
“We would like to set the record straight. What Mantshantsha conveniently fails to mention is that Eskom’s biggest cost driver is the cost of primary coal and Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers, (REIPP’s),” Hlubi-Majola.
“For the past three years, the cost of labour has remained flat at Eskom. In 2017, the wage bill was R33billion and also in the 2020 financial year the Eskom wage bill was R32.9billion.However, the cost of primary coal and (REIPP’s) currently accounts for 55% of Eskom’s operational costs.”
Eskom total operating costs are around R164 billion per annum, and out of that, the coal and the REIPP costs make up approximately 55% of its total operating costs, which is equal to around R90 billion.
“Therefore, we call on journalists to kindly get their facts straight before perpetuating fake news, even if the source of such fake news is the Eskom spokesperson,” she said.
“We have also noted the announcement by Eskom to implement stage two load-shedding until 10pm on Tuesday night. We condemn the executive management at Eskom for continuing to impose misery on the public. They continue to demonstrate their total inability to solve the crisis of load-shedding.”
Hlubi-Majola said it was a total disgrace that the GCEO Andre De Ruyter and the COO Jan Oberholzer were so incompetent that they continued to place the country’s economic outlook in jeopardy, because they cannot guarantee energy supply.
“They have ignored our demands to implement quality maintenance and now they cannot keep the lights on. Their failure will be used to fuel the lie that Eskom lacks capacity, and therefore the private sector must get involved,” she said.
“This is also how government will justify the corrupt deal involving power supply from Turkish power ships. We have been lied to as the public. We are told there is no money for SOE’s, but they have money to lock us into a 20-year contract which willcostR10.9 billion per year!”
Eskom has the capacity to provide electricity much more cheaply through the existing power stations, but they are shutting these down which will result in more than 120 thousand job losses.
“We should not have to depend on these power ships if quality maintenance was being done, but the deliberate decision taken by Eskom executive management not to execute quality maintenance has provided the perfect opportunity for capital to loot state coffers through this process,” said Hlubi-Majola.
“Clearly State Capture and the looting associated with it is alive and well and continues unabated under this Ramaphosa administration. We warned that there was no such thing as a New Dawn, just the same looters and liars fighting for control of the governing party. Workers and their families’ will continue to be made to suffer for this kind of corruption. We have unfortunately so far, been proven correct.”
- Inside Politics
