CAPE TOWN – In a damning report on Eskom’s skills situation, trade union Solidarity on Thursday revealed that 75% of Eskom’s 5,000 white staff are considering quitting the company.
In an attempt to stop the skills rot, Solidarity called for a moratorium on affirmative action for five years at the state power utility.Solidarity’s deputy general secretary Dirk Hermann said Eskom can impose the affirmative action moratorium without abandoning its commitment to transformation.
He said Eskom already achieved in March 2006 the 2014 black economic empowerment targets of 64% black managerial representation.
In addition, Eskom is close to reaching its own 64% black managerial representation target by 2010.
Findings from his Phd in the alienation of the non-designated group, Hermann found that:
Workers show understanding for affirmative action, but 80% feel that it is not being implemented correctly.
93% feel that promotion through hard work is out of the question.
73% feel that affirmative action prevent them from achieving their personal goals.
99% feel that they cannot influence Eskom’s affirmative action policy.
95% feel that promotion is not based on merit.
93% feel that promotion is determined by affirmative action.
77% feel that there is no future for them in Eskom.
74% do not feel that they are part of Eskom.
85% feel that they do not form part of Eskom’s future plans.
75% feel that they cannot determine their own career path.
75% are thinking of leaving the company.
64% feel that their relationship with black colleagues has deteriorated.
 
Article Source: Fin24.com
Crumbling roads a headache for Eskom Power utility Eskom, struggling to fix a severe electricity crisis, faces another headache in trucking urgently needed coal to its generating stations on crumbling and heavily used roads.Why is that every time a savage population arrogantly takes over a civilized country this sort of thing happens?There is not one single example of a post colonial country being run successfully!
Explain that all you liberals and Don’t use the Bantu education excuse!
Eskom said it will take 900 trucks to get the 45 million tons of extra coal the utility needs over the next two years to exclusively feed its power stations in coal-rich Mpumalanga province, which has some of the country’s worst roads.
The quality of the coal and getting it to Eskom’s coal-fed stations, which are concentrated in the north eastern province, are among Eskom’s biggest worries in the power crisis.
“Most of our additional coal will be trucked, which means unfortunately road transport, and that’s a big factor, with the damage on the road,” Eskom spokesperson Andrew Etzinger said. “It’s logistically challenging, particularly in bad weather when the roads are wet. This is not a simple exercise. It means another 900 trucks on the road in Mpumalanga, which is a huge amount.”
Provincial roads have suffered the same fate as Eskom, experts say, in which years of underinvestment culminated in widespread supply shortages in January, shutting the mines in Africa’s largest economy and slashing coal exports.
Deteriorating
“Exactly what is happening in Eskom is happening to the roads,” Malcolm Mitchell, executive director of the South African Road Federation, an association of road-sector professionals, said.
SA roads are riddled with potholes, rutted and slippery surfaces and suffer a lack of roadside maintenance, Mitchell said.
Worldwide a rule of thumb for measuring the competence of road authorities is the time taken to repair potholes, with 48 hours a norm for rural roads, and 12 for freeways and motorways. “In South Africa potholes often are not attended to for up to six months,” Mitchell said.
The last comprehensive survey of provincial roads was carried out eight years ago, when the figure for roads falling into the “poor and very poor category” ranged from 8 percent for the Western Cape, the only province to meet generally recognised acceptable standards, to 62 percent in the worst.
The national roads department was not immediately available to comment, but the provincial department in Mpumalanga said it was working with Eskom to improve the roads, particularly on the critical routes from coal mines to power plants.
It said it would need R3-billion within the next three to five years to upgrade the coal haulage network.
Article Source: SouthAfricaSucks.blogspot.com
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Every African country under black rule has been unable to provide basic services, there is not one single example of a post colonial country being run successfully, this video tells it like it is –
BTW love your site — RG
The white people at ESKOM wanted to organise a strike because of this, if I remember correctly. And that’s saying a lot, because in SA, it’s usually the blacks who strike.
It was in 2008 (around the time this article came out, or shortly after) that the cracks really started showing… Massive countrywide power blackouts started occurring and they realised that they had not invested in any new infrastructure since they took over in 1994. Instead of maintaining and keeping up with growing demand (and not firing whites), they thought that all this money these rich white people had collected in ESKOM’s coffers would be better spent on fancy cars, overseas trips and lavish parties.
Turns out it was whites taking care of the future funding of infrastructure. The consequences was that now all the money had been wasted and that the prices had to be pushed up by increases as high as 45%. Several of them have occurred to date. It also turned out that several companies had the privilege of buying electricity at prices lower than it cost to produce and that a significant amount of electricity is being sent to neighbouring countries.
Since then there’s be a bunch of scandals at ESKOM, one of which led to the big boss being fired, but then going to court and requesting backpay of millions as well as a performance bonus of about R83 million. Which is absolutely ridiculous, considering that there was a complete and utter lack of any performance whatsoever.
BEE (black economic empowerment) / AA is a disaster.
RG, you’re forgetting Haiti, it’s not in Africa ;)
It’s always the same pattern, they slaughter all the whites like they did in Haiti in 1804, and Kenya, and the Congo, and now in SA and Zim and then it all goes to pot. Then they feel sorry for themselves, and expect whites to bail them out again. China would not tolerate this sort of crap. Good for them. We need to stop. Africa is a bottomless pit.
That photo with the huge potholes, that makes it look like it’s only a rural thing, which isn’t necessarily representative (I understand space constraints etc, I don’t mind, just saying).
Yes there are potholes like that in rural areas, but they are also in regular streets in urban or city areas. We have a running joke in the country that people (whites, because the blacks don’t care) plant saplings in those potholes out of frustration because these potholes do not get fixed! LOL wish I had a photo to post.
Others fill them up with cement etc. Before the world cup they were running around trying to patch these things up, but I’m not sure how long these patchups will last.