Four Eskom executives who were suspended earlier this year, have been cleared of all charges by an independent investigation.
CEO Tshediso Matona was suspended together with Finance Director Tsholofelo Molefe, Commercial Executive Matshela Koko and Head of Capital Projects Dan Marokane after an investigation was launched into the power producer’s inner workings and why it was struggling to keep the lights on.
Matona at the time launched an appeal to the Labour Court to have his suspension overturned, but was unsuccessful. A couple of weeks later he decided to resign from the position and leave Eskom altogether.
Since Matona and two other executives have already left Eskom even though they have been cleared, the remaining executive will be reinstated.
“Given the stress that this created, I’d only be happy to let that be water under the bridge,” Matona said in a statement.
Eskom’s Acting CEO Brian Molefe in the meantime told Tim Modise in an interview that Nersa’s denial of the power producer’s request for an electricity fare hike won’t put the company in a financially sticky situation.
Molefe explained that Eskom is still spending money on diesel power generation, but it will be able to recoup the spent money at a later stage.
“The tariff hike was to ask for money, to spend money on diesel or money for diesel, and actually PPP, which is the short-term agreement, so we are continuing with that,” he said. “We are continuing with spending money on diesel. We do use diesel to avert loadshedding because not using diesel is much more expensive, than allowing loadshedding to happen. We are spending money on diesel.
“The tariff application was not about establishing the principle of whether our spending on diesel can be passed onto the regulator and the consumer, and principle is established. What the decision simply said was that ‘go and spend the money, and when you have spent the money, you can claw it back’. We wanted the money upfront but the regulator said we can claw it back later, which means that the program has just been postponed and not completely done away with.”
