Cape Town - A week is a long time for embattled power utility Eskom, which marked its 100th birthday about a month ago.
Kgosientso “Sputla” Ramokgopa, the Minister in the Presidency responsible for Electricity, has been visiting power stations to better understand the challenges they face.
He subsequently said that the ailing state-owned power utility infrastructure breakdowns were due to technical issues, and not corruption.
But, he identified poor quality coal and procurement irregularities related to corruption at Tutuka Power Station.
Former Eskom boss André de Ruyter, on his exit, also famously spoke out about corruption at the entity.
Subsequent to the fact-finding visits by the minister, Eskom reduced load shedding to Stage 1 and 2. This has since gone back up to Stage 3 and 4.
Then over the past 48 hours, it emerged that Eskom has been exempted from declaring irregular and fruitless and wasteful spending for the 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years.
The exemption means this expenditure does not have to be disclosed in its financial statements, but must be included in Eskom’s annual report.
The questions that arise: has a utility that has had no incentive to fight corruption essentially been given a free pass to not account on the misuse of public funds, and have politicians as well as criminal cartels been given licence to steal money intended to stabilise the power supply?
AfriForum has already indicated that it would bring a review application against the National Treasury’s decision to grant the exemption to Eskom in terms of irregular and wasteful expenditure.
Eskom has to account for its financial management; there is no question about that.
Cape Times