Secrecy cloaks Eskom talks

ESKOM was tight-lipped last night about unconfirmed reports that the power utility yesterday offered a wage offer of 4.7 percent in the fresh round of negotiations with trade unions.

The negotiations between Eskom and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Solidarity resumed yesterday after the parties deadlocked last week.

At the time, Eskom had refused to offer a wage increase.

Eskom spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe would not be drawn last night on the proceedings at the negotiations.

“We have taken a decision that we will not comment about the progress at the negotiations.

“We feel we need to give the process a chance.

“We must let it unfold,” said Phasiwe.

Attempts to get comment from the trade unions were unsuccessful.

Phasiwe said the power system remained constrained with the risk of stage one load shedding remaining high owing to a shortage of capacity.

“We have had additional capacity after one of the units at Tutuka came on line,” he said.

Eskom has been increasing available electricity capacity following last week’s industrial action by members of NUM and Numsa which disrupted operations at the power utility’s power stations, leading to the implementation of load shedding late last week.

Eskom said it did not anticipate implementing rotational load shedding.

It issued an alert for rotational level one load shedding from 5pm to 9pm.

Level one load shedding requires 1 000MW to be shed nationwide.