This news aggregator site highlights South African labour news from a wide range of internet and print sources. Each posting has a synopsis of the source article, together with a link or reference to the original. Postings cover the range of labour related matters from industrial relations to generalist human resources.
Sunday Times reports that as SA faces its biggest power crisis in the democratic era, Eskom executives are divided on the critical skills deficit hindering the power utility’s ability to provide electricity.
Several senior leaders at the state-owned company have said there is disagreement along racial lines about the skills issue in the upper echelons after a SOS from public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan for those with experience to come to the rescue. One insider said: “You know when you talk about the issue of skills at Eskom, even at executive level, it depends on whether you’re speaking to a black person or a white person, and you will hear a different answer. There is a feeling that when whites say there are no skills, they are talking about blacks who are now in charge of most of these power stations. The blacks feel that the whites only say this because they do not recognise their capacity.” Another said: “The view from human resources is that Eskom should not talk about the lack of skills and how this contributes to load shedding because it will anger some of the unions who feel that it is a concession that the aggressive affirmative action and employment equity that was implemented in the past has failed.” Gordhan last week sent a letter to Solidarity’s chief executive Dirk Hermann to thank the trade union for its offer of assistance and to ask Solidarity to supply a list of engineers and technical experts who could be recruited to assist. This led to outrage by labour unions and others on social media as they construed this to mean that Gordhan was racialising the skills issue. Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said: Eskom is making use of external skilled resources and will continue to do so to augment skills gaps in the organisation, and to provide accelerated development and skills transfer through mentoring and coaching of employees.”
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Sabelo Skiti at Sunday Times (subscriber access only)
- Read too, Eskom skills shortage boiling over into race row, at BusinessTech
- And also, Themba Godi labels Pravin Gordhan racist over Solidarity Eskom plan, at Pretoria News
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page