LETTER: Will Numsa inform the SA public how Eskom’s critical skills shortage should be addressed?
Why should Solidarity’s offer to assist with skills recruitment not be progressed?
The overwhelming majority of South Africans are exhausted from load-shedding, the incompetence of public institutions and the wide-scale corruption of the past two decades.
Research carried out by Primaresearch in 2021 found that Eskom’s then planned ramped up maintenance programme might prove ineffective if its staff skills issues were not resolved. The report also reported that “management had been instructed to get extra skills they might need to ensure the proper level of professional skill and engineering professionalism”.
It is against this background that I highlight the recent offer from Solidarity to provide the names of the best 100 skilled South Africans of the 705 people who put their names forward with a desire to help Eskom. Their skills are offered, as I understand it, to provide mentorship for the staff implementing Eskom’s operational maintenance programme and power station operational management, and Solidarity has offered to set up a panel to select the top 100.
A spokesperson for trade union Numsa has questioned what recruitment process public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan is driving, highlighting that what the minister is doing is irregular and could be an attempt to reverse black economic empowerment.
After 15 years of load-shedding the less said about BEE the better. Will Numsa please inform the SA public how the critical skills shortage in Eskom should be addressed in the short term, and why Solidarity’s offer to assist with skills recruitment should not be progressed?
Neil Garden
Via email
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