Johannesburg - Eskom chairman Zola Tsotsi is losing his grip on his position as more stakeholders clamour for him to be axed.
On Tuesday, Cosatu came out against the board chairman, who has been accused by some in labour of sowing divisions amongst the utility’s leaders while the energy crisis deepens.
While Cosatu has stopped short of backing calls by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) for Tsotsi to be fired or resign, it said on Tuesday it was “sympathetic” to its affiliate.
“We questioned last week why the executive was suspended and not the chairman,” Cosatu spokesman Patrick Craven told Independent Media.
An independent investigation into Eskom’s crises was announced by the government last week, but it has not got off the ground yet.
Craven said the probe had to swiftly establish the underlying reasons for the utility’s seemingly endless governance and financial woes.
“And it must be genuinely independent, not influenced in any way by the board chairperson, Zola Tsotsi, who, as the National Union of Mineworkers has said, has been accused of ‘interfering in operational matters and taking over executive responsibilities’ and should be fired,” he said in a statement.
“Cosatu expects the investigators and the government to insist that Eskom must cut fat, improve drastically its revenue collection capacity and manage contracts effectively to address its financial problems.”
Meanwhile the federation has voiced its opposition to a 25% tariff increase proposal by the utility.
In 2010, Cosatu warned against what believed was a trend of using high electricity tariffs as the key mode of funding Eskom’s capital expansion programme.
The National Energy Regulator of SA has just awarded Eskom an interim tariff increase of 31.3%. This was after it had allowed Eskom a 27.5% tariff increase for 2008/09.
“If Eskom is granted this 25.3% increase, it will mean that from 2008 until 1 July there will have been a cumulative increase of around 250%! In contrast, consumers who have had 5% annual salary increases over this period will have had a cumulative salary increase of around 40% since 2008,” said Craven.
He said that in the long run, the tariff increases would have even more serious consequences for the economy as electricity was a major part of the running costs of nearly all companies.
Many would become unviable and would have to retrench workers, while there would be fewer new businesses, Craven warned.
Eskom was recently downgraded to “junk” status by international credit rating agencies. Cosatu has called on the government to intervene in a “big way” to help the utility out of its financial problems and raise the necessary funds needed.
Labour Bureau