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City Press reports that Eskom is under fresh pressure to review and terminate the recently concluded two-year contract of its former chief operations officer, Jan Oberholzer, who is facing criticism for his role in the controversial awarding of a R500 million emergency security contract to the Fidelity Services Group for three months.
This comes after Eskom board members were made aware that acting CEO, Calib Cassim, may have ignored a potential conflict of interest when appointing Oberholzer as an operations director to oversee operations at Kusile and Koeberg power stations. The appointment came despite the former COO not only facing an investigation together with the recently suspended head of security, Karen Pillay, for the Fidelity contract scandal, but also because he was simply not outstanding. Oberholzer is the person who put the final signature on the Fidelity emergency award contract. The controversial appointment of Oberholzer had members of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) up in arms, with its chairperson, Mkhuleko Hlengwa, accusing the retired COO of “throwing a javelin and catching it on the other side” and another MP asking that he be removed from his position in the same way that Eskom hah placed Pillay on precautionary suspension. Cassim admitted to MPs that he had to create the operational director position for Oberholzer as it had never existed before, adding that the new position only reported to him as the acting CEO. He further admitted that he had not conducted any due diligence before finalising a contract with Oberholzer. Hlengwa told Cassim and board members that there should have been a skills transfer before Oberholzer’s retirement “so that you don’t have to create another position”.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Nkululeko Ncana at City Press
- Read too, Eskom's R500m Fidelity contract modelled on deal which previously cost just R10m a month, at News24 (subscriber access only)
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page