ESKOM EXTENDS MOLEFE CONTRACT
Analyst hopes that it will be a permanent appointment
ESKOM has extended the contract of acting chief executive Brian Molefe. Molefe last month told a media briefing that if his contract was not renewed, his last day at the parastatal would be July 19.
But Eskom yesterday failed to disclose to Sowetan the length of the new contract.
“The contract (of Molefe) has been renewed. (The contract) is still on an acting basis,” the Eskom board replied via e-mail. Minister of Public Enterprises Lynne Brown has previously expressed her wishes for the Eskom board to give Molefe a permanent contract. The department referred questions regarding Molefe’s contract to the Eskom board.
He is the current permanent chief executive of freight logistics parastatal Transnet. Molefe’s tenure at Eskom has been a mixed bag.
While he is credited with reducing power outages and stabilising the parastatal, he suffered a blow when the National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) declined Eskom’s application for a tariff hike that would have resulted in the company’s electricity prices sky-rocketing by an additional 12.61% this year. Soon after the Nersa tariff increase rejection, the state sold its 13.91% stake of Vodacom to the Public Investment Corporation to finance the R23-billion allocation to Eskom.
Energy analyst Chris Yelland said Molefe had indicated in the past that he would like to stay on at the parastatal to fulfil certain operational requirements.
Yelland speculated that the reasons for the Eskom board’s reluctance to appoint Molefe permanently could be based on the ironing out of Molefe’s predecessor Tshediso Matona’s exit agreement.
“It could be that there are legal issues between Eskom and Mr
Matona that are still being attended to, which could mean that the company could simply appoint a chief executive on a permanent basis after those few issues have been settled,” he said.
Yelland said he did expect Eskom to appoint Molefe on a permanent basis.