The Citizen reports that President Cyril Ramaphosa has denied that splitting Eskom up into three state-owned entities was about “privatising” the struggling power utility.  

Instead, the president claimed the aim was “balancing operations to make the entity more efficient”.  But, Irvin Jim, general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) has expressed strong disagreement, saying his union was preparing to take to the streets in protest over the proposed split.  In his view, the proposed split was “not about the future of Eskom”, but rather about “preparing” the utility for privatisation and a bid to introduce independent power providers (IPPs) “at all costs”.  Speaking during his state of the nation address (Sona) last week, Ramaphosa acknowledged that Eskom was in crisis and posed a significant risk to the economy.  “To bring credibility to the turnaround and to position South Africa’s power sector for the future, we shall immediately embark on a process of establishing three separate entities – Generation, Transmission and Distribution – under Eskom Holdings,” said Ramaphosa.  In the short term, Ramaphosa said the state-owned entity would need to reduce its costs, and raise revenue through tariff increases that were also affordable for South Africa.  He also hinted at another possible bailout for the struggling company.

• Read the report on this story in full at The Citizen
• Read too, Numsa to Ramaphosa: We'll meet you in the streets over Eskom, at Fin24

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