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Mining Weekly reports that Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan has refuted suggestions that government was interfering with the work of boards and executives at State-owned companies, such as Eskom, but has also indicated that he will not stand by should decisions be made that lead to significant job losses.
In response to questions posed by MPs during a briefing on the so-called Eskom Special Paper to the Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises, Gordhan said there had been “no interference, as far as I’m concerned”. He went on to state: “But if you [hear us say] ‘don’t fire 16,000 people’, and you consider that to be interference, well I’m sorry, we are going to interfere, because it matters whether you put 16,000 families into the street as far as the African National Congress is concerned.” Gordhan urged labour, business, government and communities to come together to find different ways of redeploying those Eskom employees whose jobs could be affected by the decommissioning of the older power stations. Already some workers were being transferred from stations such as Komati, which is facing decommissioning, to the Kusile plant, which is in the process of being ramped up. In addition, Gordhan was confident that some Eskom employees could, in time, be transferred to municipalities.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard at Mining Weekly
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