LETTER: Maintenance takes a back seat at Eskom
Power utility’s CEO is under political pressure to move to renewables
Neva Makgetla says the problems of load-shedding may be over within a year under Eskom’s new management (“Superheroics are not the way to fix Eskom”, November 15). Yet André de Ruyter has been telling us it could take years to sort out Eskom.
The “running the plants hard” argument is also doubtful if one understands how planned and sequential maintenance works. This was done under Brian Molefe and Matshela Koko. I think De Ruyter is under political pressure to move to renewables and that is where Eskom’s focus now is, not maintenance.
Molefe and Koko were not stonewalled here, but on nuclear, which was a direct competitor to the renewables the Treasury favoured. This bolsters my argument about where the pressure on De Ruyter is really coming from — as well as powerful financial/political/media interests behind the lobbying of these renewables contracts.
Hanief Haider, Via BusinessLIVE
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