ESKOM’s new chairman, Mpho Makwana, said the board isn’t planning any immediate changes to management and will take between 30 and 60 days to assess the company’s power plants.
Makwana, who was appointed along with almost all of the board this month, said the plants’ performance will be looked at to see what needs to be done to make them operational at an average of 75% of the time, a target set by Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan.
Currently their so-called electricity availability factor, a measure of when they can produce electricity, is less than 60%.
“We have to assume office and give the existing team the benefit of the doubt,” he said in an interview with Newzroom Afrika, a Johannesburg-based television channel.
Chief executive officer Andre de Ruyter’s “heart is in the right place. We have to applaud him and support him for as long as he is group CEO.”
South Africa has suffered its worst ever blackouts this month as Eskom’s plants keep breaking down.
BLOOMBERG
