Statement by Minister Lynne Brown regarding Eskom bonuses, 7 Sept
07/09/2015
It appears some people are happy to constantly pull our State-Owned Companies down and to ignore their successes. In this instance the sensational utterances by the DA Member, Natasha Mazzone, is no exception. She conveniently ignored the fact that Eskom managed to record a marginal profit of R3.6 billion and instead focused on matters which I as Shareholder Representative have addressed with the Board.
She has been vocal on load shedding and since Eskom managed to find the balance between continued maintenance and keeping the lights on, Mazzone has changed her tactic. That is understandable as she certainly must look for straws to be relevant.
Let me address Mazzone's main concern about alleged bonuses paid to Executives. If she had read the Annual Report correctly, she would have seen that it was actually long-term incentives awarded in 2011/12 financial year, vested in the 2013/14 financial which was payable only in June 2014. Hence, these amounts reflect in the 2014/15 financials. In view of strict gatekeepers to the payment of bonuses, Eskom Executives did not qualify for short-term bonuses in the past two financial years.
In addition to basic conditions of employment, Eskom's salary structure is based on the size of the company in the market, using criteria such as revenue, assets, head count and employment costs. If one had to really compare Eskom to the market, one would see that Eskom is historically paid below the market median.
Despite her comments, let me state the following achievements, which Mazzone deliberately chose to ignore and fail to give credit. Eskom achieved the following during the 2014/15 financial statement:
Eskom completed the Sere Wind Farm on the Cape West Coast ahead of schedule.
Currently 100 MW of clean power generated from Sere Wind Farm is being fed into the power grid.
Medupi Power Station delivered first power to the grid. In March 2015, the first power from Medupi was successfully fed into the power grid. This accomplishment is a significant step towards the production of full power from the first unit and ultimately, the power station itself. The commercial operation of this unit was achieved last month.
Transmission line construction continues and Eskom successfully completed the construction of 318 kilometres of transmission lines and substations for the year ended in March 2015.
The majority of the transmission lines strung were in the Northern grid including lines for evacuating power from Medupi and Kusile.
The electrification of households is ongoing, an additional 160 000 households were connected to the grid over the past year and that while the grid was constrained.
Statement issued by Lynne Brown, Minister of Public Enterprises, September 7 2015
