BL Premium reports that Deputy President David Mabuza said in parliament on Thursday that the government could not continue to justify the number of people employed at Eskom given the amount of electricity the beleaguered utility was producing.
“We must scale down ... the amount of workers has doubled since 2008, but the amount of energy we are producing is less. That means the demand is getting less [as] a lot of people have opted out of Eskom, so the number of employees does not justify the business case,” Mabuza told MPs. The state-owned power utility employs about 46,000 workers costing it almost R32bn in salaries, bonuses, overtime and benefits. A 2016 World Bank study found that Eskom needed a workforce of 14,244. Despite being overstaffed, the government has previously said it does not want retrenchments imposed on Eskom as part of efforts to turn the utility around. Mabuza said government’s support for headcount reduction did not mean it was backing retrenchments, rather the reduction would be achieved via natural attrition and voluntary severance packages. The plan, in the short term, is to reduce the headcount by at least 6,000. “We are not retrenching but affording people different tools, such as severance packages. Eskom has put R75,000 as a gratuity if [staff] take a severance package. So we are not forcing people out. Some are getting out of the system through natural attrition, such as death,” Mabuza said.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Bekezela Phakathi at BusinessLive (paywall access only)
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