Business Report writes that Eskom has decided to rope in veteran engineers to mentor and upskill its power station managers in a bid to avert prevalent, unplanned breakdowns at its ageing coal-fired power stations.
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan announced this intervention on Friday during the presentation of his Budget Vote for the 2022/23 financial year in Parliament. This comes on the heels of the sudden resignation of group executive for generation, Phillip Dukashe, early this month after a year in the job and 26 years at Eskom. He cited personal reasons. Gordhan said it was no secret that Eskom did not have the necessary human capital for the maintenance of its current fleet of power stations. The minister said Eskom was taking urgent steps to improve the performance of generation, including oversight meetings to hold power station management accountable for performance and the setting up of war rooms at selected power stations. He said a lack of engineering and technical skills plus experience in Eskom remained a significant challenge, and Eskom had introduced a new training programme at its Academy of Learning to upgrade skills. “A skills mentoring programme using highly experienced power station managers has been launched. This team will be deployed to power stations where load losses are particularly severe,” Gordhan indicated. In 2020, Eskom was slammed for considering recruiting a group of 60 retired engineers who had volunteered their skills to boost its capacity in order to maintain its power stations.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Siphelele Dludla at Business Report
- Read too, 'No attempt to disguise' latest incident of sabotage at Eskom power station as another cable is cut, at Engineering News
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