Two-month wait to hear what new Eskom board will do to fix energy crisis
The chair and his board are tasked with increasing SA’s energy availability factor to 75%, from less than 60% currently
Eskom’s new board chair, Mpho Makwana, has vowed to comment on plans to resolve the country’s energy crisis after two months.
Makwana told Newzroom Afrika this week the board will use the time to conduct an “onboarding programme”, saying the Eskom he led in 2011 was not the same as the present one.
The chair and his board are tasked with increasing SA’s energy availability factor (EAF) to 75% — a target set by public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan. The EAF is currently less than 60%.
“We want to be given the space to conduct a proper assessment. The second thing I need to be upfront about is we must guard against placing hope on an individual. Eskom has got 35,000-40,000 very capable people and is not a one person’s show in the office of the chair,” said Makwana.
According to Makwana, the “onboarding programme” will include visiting various power stations, establishing the root causes and what is needed to be done to improve generation capacity.
“Only by dealing with the root causes will we really be able to solve these problems permanently, and this takes time,” he said.
TimesLIVE