Four suspended Koeberg managers back at work
● Koeberg nuclear power station’s general manager, suspended for alleged poor performance more than two years ago, has quietly resumed the role after being cleared of any wrongdoing.
Velaphi Ntuli returned to his job last month after an internal investigation by Eskom.
Three other senior managers at the power station in Cape Town who were suspended over poor project management — programme manager Justice Gumede, project engineering manager Tommy Booysen and project controls manager Jacky MajorPeterson — also returned to work.
Eskom announced the suspension of Ntuli in June 2021 when the country was plunged into darkness due to load-shedding. The power utility cited poor performance of the station as the main reason.
Eskom, however, has now confirmed “there was no lack-of-performance finding against Mr Ntuli”.
“In November 2023, Eskom decided to redeploy Mr Velaphi Ntuli to his previous position as the power station general manager at Koeberg nuclear power station, as his expertise and experience is crucially needed to assist the power station in completing the steam generator replacement project,” said the power utility.
Before returning to his position, Ntuli had been reporting to headquarters at Megawatt Park in Johannesburg as general manager of coal and clean technology.
Eskom, which implemented stage 3 and 4 load-shedding at the weekend, said Ntuli’s experience is key to rolling out Koeberg’s “long-term operation programme” and continuing to “safely operate the plant once its licence is granted by the National Nuclear Regulator”.
At the time of Ntuli’s suspension, Koeberg unit 1, with a capacity of about 900MW, had been out for six months, with the power utility saying it could have “assisted in reducing the depth of load-shedding had the unit been brought back on time as originally planned”.
Eskom suspended Gumede, Booysen and Major-Peterson in September 2022 due to alleged poor project management, inadequate contract management and an apparent lack of financial discipline, which had contributed towards the steam generator replacement project not starting on schedule.
Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) commissioner Pat Stone in November 2022 reversed the suspensions of Booysen and Major-Peterson, finding them to have been unfair. However, they only returned to work in mid-2023.
Eskom confirmed this week that they “were also not found guilty of any wrongdoing after a thorough investigation and are back at work”.
Koeberg insiders alleged the three were suspended because they were opposed to Eskom paying a R1bn delay claim to French company Framatome, which is rolling out the steam generator replacement project.
Gumede was never charged by Eskom but returned to work in June last year. His union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), has lodged a case of unfair demotion against the power utility.
Insiders claim he has not returned to his position and “has been put in an office with a laptop without really anything to do”.
The NUM, which represented Ntuli at his disciplinary hearing, said it felt vindicated.
Khangela Baloyi, NUM energy sector coordinator, said: “We were against the suspension as we always viewed this suspension as baseless.”
Baloyi said Ntuli and the other managers returning to work would bring stability to the station.
“It will further assist with the return back of unit 2, which is on a steam generator replacement project.
“Unfortunately, the people who carried out these unlawful suspensions are themselves no longer at Eskom,” he added.
Koeberg’s unit 2 is on a long-term outage for its steam generator replacement project and is expected to return to service by the end of September.
Eskom declined to divulge the costs incurred in penalty claims by Framatome because it does “not disclose contractual or personal information as it is confidential”.