Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has promised fat Christmas bonuses to Eskom employees if they can keep the lights on.
The promise ignores the fact that in June 2023, Eskom staff reached a 7% wage hike with their employer. The salary increase was pushed through even though Eskom had reported its biggest loss at R24 billion.
During the past year, Eskom said it had 280 days of load shedding, costing the economy an estimated R300 billion and thousands of jobs.
On Monday, Ramokgopa promised Christmas bonuses to workers at Mpumalanga’s Arnot Power Station where the company is operating at just 48% of its capacity.
“Continue the good work. The better the performance the better the incentive you will receive in your pockets.
“Once you give us the kind of progress and energy improvement that we want, you will see that your families will be happy and you are going to enjoy a better Christmas,” he said.
The 51-year-old coal-fired power plant in Middelburg recently experienced eight boiler tube leaks.
Ramokgopa said this was way outside the norm of just one boiler tube leak over a 12-month cycle.
“For you to resolve the problem, you resolve power station by power station, unit by unit and I am sure that the contribution of labour, the contribution of management is key to the resolution of this problem.”
After eight days of no load shedding, the power cuts resumed and coincided with the start of the matric exams.
Even if there is no load shedding during the day when the class of 2023 is writing, the blackouts resume daily after 4pm and continue through the night. This means study sessions are interrupted or thousands of learners are forced to study by candlelight.
“We are on track to reduce significantly the intensity of load shedding. We had a period of eight days of no load shedding and then we hit a snag where we had 11 units that were out as a result of these boiler tube leaks but those units are coming back,” said Ramokgopa.
He said the power utility desperately needs to find a solution to fund and roll out transmission at an estimated cost of over R390 billion.
