Eskom confidential documents – chair refuses DA submission

Manie van Dyk, Shadow Minister of Public Enterprises
15 September 2009

In a clear attempt to protect Eskom CEO Jacob Maroga from proper oversight, the chair of the portfolio committee on public enterprises, Vytjie Mentor, has refused to accept confidential Eskom memos regarding the power utility’s overpayments for coal. Ms Mentor has ruled that the committee cannot accept these documents, which I attempted to submit at today’s committee meeting, because they are deemed public submissions, even though it was made clear that the documents actually constitute internal correspondence between Eskom and one of its main coal suppliers, Ingwe. Ms Mentor also ordered Eskom not to answer questions on the obvious problem of their mismanagement of coal supplies. 

This was not the only attempt to hide the facts from parliamentary oversight at the public enterprises committee today. Of the 30 questions submitted by the members of the committee to Mr Maroga, the chairperson ruled that Eskom was only obliged to answer three – and then only those which they considered important. The rest will merely be answered in writing at a later stage.

This must also be understood within the context that Eskom has failed to appear before Parliament to answer questions on their 2007/08 annual report, in the last year. It is standard parliamentary practice that all departments and public enterprises appear before their parliamentary portfolio committee to answer questions pertaining to their annual report. Eskom has not done so, and no reason has been given for why this has not happened.

This is a serious indictment of the ANC’s view on the role of public debate and parliamentary scrutiny. The buck is supposed to stop with Parliament, so the ANC government needs to explain why so much wastage of taxpayer money is going on, and why Eskom is not being held to account.

Eskom is losing millions of rands to gross mismanagement and incompetence, even while its CEO gets a 27% pay increase, and even while it continues to impose massive tariff increases on South African consumers and businesses. The argument made by Eskom Chairman Bobby Godsell that Eskom electricity tariffs are under priced and keep out competition is also completely spurious – independent power producers have already spent billions on submitting tenders to government, and are then told to wait indefinitely.