Lephalele, Limpopo - Workers and construction managers at Eskom’s Medupi site claim that they have been subject to a reign of terror, violence and intimidation over the past three weeks amid a strike marked by xenophobic demands that have all severely curtailed work.
These events also mean that the completion of the new power station in Limpopo will be delayed even further.
Sources at the Medupi site told Business Report that in the past three weeks, three busses were torched in Lephalale and a bus driver, who was trying to transport workers to the site, was attacked and ended up in hospital in a coma. Managers of the construction companies at the site have been threatened with death for going to work.
“We are living in hell, people just go around beating others up and there is nothing we can do,” a manager of one of the companies said.
FAR FROM NORMAL
“The world thinks everything is peaceful here and we only have a normal industrial dispute, but things are far from normal. Maybe the authorities are waiting for someone to die before they take action,” the source added.
Khulu Phasiwe, an Eskom spokesman, said over the past three weeks there had only been about 2 000 workers at the Medupi site compared with the normal 14 000 due to the strike and intimidation.
“Workers are being intimidated, removed from buses and fear for their lives,” he added.
The striking workers have six key demands including that: each worker be paid a R10 000 bonus for completing the first Medupi unit; foreigners be removed from the site and be replaced with South Africans; locals should be given first preference when it comes to recruitment; unskilled and semi-skilled workers be equipped with skills; and workers receive proper accommodation.
CONSTANT DELAYS
Phasiwe expressed concern at the state of Medupi station, which had been under construction for seven years and was no where near completion.
Given the public holidays yesterday and Friday, Phasiwe said he did not expect much work to be done this week and this would mean work at the Medupi site would have been curtailed for up to four weeks.
Medupi, which is constructed by companies such as Mitsubishi South Africa, Murray & Roberts, Aveng, Basil Read and a group of smaller contractors has suffered a series of setbacks forcing Eskom to shift its scheduled opening and to postpone it a number of times.
The new power station is expected to have six boilers each powering a 794 megawatts turbine, producing 4 764MW of power when completed. In March, Eskom announced that Medupi’s unit six produced power for the first time.
“Within the next three months, South Africa will see Medupi unit six’s full potential of 794MW being fed into the South African national grid,” suspended chief executive Tshediso Matona had said at the time. But shortly after that, 3 000 workers went on a wildcat strike demanding the extension of an accommodation subsidy and an end to dismissals.
Construction companies later dismissed 1 700 of the striking workers, forcing Eskom to intervene and have them rehired.
INTIMIDATION
A worker at Medupi confirmed that some were scared of going to work even though they wanted to because of the intimidation. “We have not had anything to live on since the strike started,” said the worker who refused to be named.
“The people who are on strike are few but they are well resourced and armed, so if you stay with them in the same hostel you know you cannot go against anything they say.”
But the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said its members had borne the brunt of the intimidation because they were not part of the unprotected strike. “There are armed groups going around intimidating people saying they must not go to work,” NUM construction co-ordinator Isaac Ntshangase said.
Eskom said construction at Medupi and Kusile was now expected to be completed by 2021. Acting chief executive Brian Molefe said it was possible that the date might be reviewed again as a result of the continuing strike.