DURBAN - Mark Lamberti has resigned from his post as a director on the Eskom Board.
Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, , made the announcement on Friday night. According to Gordhan Lamberti has tendered his resignation and it had been accepted.
Lamberti is the CEO of Imperial Holdings Limited, a group of logistics and automotive companies.
His resignation comes after a recent judgement by the North Gauteng. The court found the businessman guilty of discrimination after he referred to an employee as a female employment equity candidate.
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Lamberti stated in his later that his decision to resign was driven by his fiduciary duty to Eskom and his consistent and proven record of acting in as much as possible in the best interests of South Africa.
Lamberti cited the reason for his resigning from the board was the High Court judgement of March 23 in the case of J Chowan v Associated Motor Holdings (Pty) Ltd and Others.
In representations to the Eskom board, the businessman maintained that while mistakes had been made and there were important lessons to be learnt, there were no findings in the court's judgement of race or gender discrimination against AMH (Associated Motor Holdings), Imperial or myself.
Lamberti said that despite this there has been a mainstream and social media frenzy of mainly inaccurate commentary. He said that the inaccurate commentary was being fuelled by a political plan and wrong interpretations of the High Court judgment, which culminated among other things in the most scathing defamation of him.
According to the businessman, the most significant aspect of this is the call for the Minister and the President to take him off the Eskom board.
The Public Enterprises Minister said that Lamberti must be commended for making the hard choice to put the interests of Eskom, the board and the country above everything else.
Gordhan added that Lamberti had stated he could not in good conscience take any compensation from Eskom and would give back the fees paid to him as the work that been doing on the Eskom board to date had been preparatory.
Just a few days ago, after the court has made his decision on Lamberti's case, the businessman apologised for his comments to his employee. In a statement Lamberti said that is was not his intention to insult the employee or demean her in any way.