Sakeliga takes Treasury to court over Eskom exemption regulations

11 December 2023

Sakeliga is heading to court to disclose information about how National Treasury intended to grant dubious exemptions to Eskom and other state entities from financial reporting requirements.

This follows after Sakeliga welcomed the Finance Minister's withdrawal of Eskom's exemption from the Public Finance Management Act in April. The withdrawal arose from pressure by Sakeliga and others.

The withdrawn exemption would have allowed Eskom to avoid reporting irregular expenditures in its financial statements. Following the withdrawal, Sakeliga indicated in a press release that we would investigate whether other state entities had received similar exemptions.

The process began with submitting PAIA (Promotion of Access to Information Act) requests, which were never adequately answered. After several months of delays by National Treasury, Sakeliga has filed court papers at the High Court in Pretoria to access all records related to Eskom's withdrawn exemption. We also want the court to order that records related to similar exemptions granted to various state institutions be made public.

Sakeliga is taking these steps because the Minister, through exemptions from the Public Finance Management Act, wants to allow state-owned companies like Eskom and Transnet to obscure corruption and irregularities. Such concealment delays the inevitable process whereby inefficient state-owned companies lose their artificial monopoly over services such as electricity distribution.

Issued by Tian Alberts, Legal and Liaison Officer, Sakeliga, 11 December 2023