Durban - Eskom’s new chief executive took charge of the crisis-plagued power utility on Monday, embarking sooner than planned on the mammoth task of fixing the troubled government parastatal.
André de Ruyter will oversee a government plan to split state-owned Eskom into three units - for generation, transmission and distribution - in an attempt to make it more efficient. He assumes the hot seat as the country recovers from stage 2 load shedding, and fears more cuts ahead as business resumes in the next two weeks.
In its current form Eskom is widely viewed as the biggest impediment to economic growth, though the restructuring plan has taken shape against a backdrop of high unemployment, and unions have pledged to fight it.
De Ruyter had been due to start work on January 15, but the sense of crisis surrounding Eskom, which has been leaderless since July and imposed the latest in a long run of power cuts at the weekend, persuaded him to take the helm early.
Saddled with unreliable coal-fired power stations, Eskom has struggled to meet demand since 2007, forcing it into several rounds of extensive power cuts. Outages last year dented economic output and shook investor confidence in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration.
At the weekend, it cut up to 2000 megawatts (MW) from the national grid due to a shortage of generating capacity.
In a previous role as chief executive of Nampak, De Ruyter steered the packaging company through financial difficulties, and part of his new brief was to restructure Eskom’s R450billion debt pile.
Eskom spokesperson Dikatso Mothae said on Monday De Ruyter had met some Eskom staff over recent public holidays and had been getting to know the business.
One of Eskom’s largest trade unions, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), has opposed the appointment, labelling it a setback to efforts to promote more black professionals.
The NUM said it was planning protests as a “welcoming party” for him, and it and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa said they would fight the plan to split Eskom, which they feared would lead to large-scale job losses and privatisation.