Plan to ‘privatise’ Eskom is not the answer: unions
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) says it will oppose calls by businesses to unbundle and privatise Eskom.
The country’s largest trade federation said the recent calls from the private sector for the power utility to be unbundled and privatised are ‘misplaced’ and ‘miss the point’.
“Eskom generates 95% of electricity and transmits and distributes 100%. It is our greatest economic asset and cannot be handed to those whose sole motive is to maximise profit. We agree that the deterioration of the power utility poses the greatest risk to our economy, but we have no choice but to fix it. Ideological fantasies of privatisation may appeal to others, but they won’t resolve our energy crisis.
“The president and his cabinet need to take the nation into their confidence on what government and Eskom will do to take power utility out of this untenable crisis and get it back on a sustainable footing and give the economy an opportunity to recover.”
Cosatu added that the country’s load shedding problems cannot be placed at the feet of workers, and have been brewing for almost two decades. “Eskom has been in a crisis and subjecting the economy to load shedding since 2006, workers cannot be blamed for decades of neglect, under-investment and state capture,” it said.
“Eskom’s unmanageable debt levels need to be slashed by half to enable it to focus on investing in maintenance and new generation. The power utility also needs to ensure it has the right skills at the right places. Efforts to tackle corruption and wasteful expenditure need to be accelerated.
“We simply cannot afford more dithering, shifting of deadlines, bureaucratic delays and endless load shedding.”
Eskom said in a statement earlier this week, that it hopes to taper down load shedding to stage 2 after labour groups agreed to a wage offer from the state-owned power utility, ending a week of illegal protests.
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