MPs hit out at Singh’s delaying tactics

SUSPENDED Eskom chief financial officer Anoj Singh raised the ire of MPs in the Eskom inquiry after he submitted the documents required for his testimony at the eleventh hour.

Singh submitted 400 pages of documents at 11pm on Monday, not leaving any time for the pages to be printed and MPs to read them before questioning him.

And MPs were not happy with what they saw as an attempt at stalling their work.

Inquiry chairwoman Zukiswa Rantho said Singh was supposed to testify late last month but had written to ask for an extension as he and his legal team were not ready.

He was then invited to appear yesterday afternoon.

Singh’s legal team have been attending the inquiry regularly.

Rantho said Singh would have to account to parliament at a later date but parliament would not be paying for flights again and he would need to take responsibility for this.

“We are not like Eskom where if we feel it necessary to give our friends a certain amount, we just give that amount,” she said. “We account to the public of South Africa.” ANC MP Zukile Luyenge revealed that the committee had made the request for documentation in July, but this had only been received hours before Singh was due to testify.

ACDP MP Steve Swart said this was a delaying tactic and another attempt – like death and legal threats received before – to delay the work of the committee.

DA MP Natasha Mazzone said the tactic was “not wise and it is not clever”, and the delay would give her time to read the documents over the December holidays “not once, not twice, not three times, four times!”

EFF MP Marshall Dlamini said that “Mr Singh and his buddies” had undermined parliament and should take a message back to those still to testify that the committee would do its work. “We are not your friends,” he said. The inquiry went ahead with the current Eskom board, with chairman Zethembe Khoza reading out a 44-page statement.

This covered many of the matters already heard in the inquiry, including the Trillian and Tegeta payments, the suspension of four Eskom executives and former Eskom chief executive Brian Molefe’s pension payout.

Khoza denied that Eskom had been involved in helping Tegeta buy Optimum coal holdings and said prepayments such as the one made to Tegeta by Eskom were common commercial practice in the industry.

Earlier in the day, the committee heard from the head of executive support at Eskom, Anton Minaar, that Molefe did not have a contract with Eskom for several months after he started working there.

He told the committee that Molefe, who had started working at Eskom in October 2015, only received a finalised contract in March last year. He had been paid during this time on the advice of Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown.

Minaar also insisted that despite Molefe receiving a five-year contract, he was “a permanent employee with a term”, thereby making him eligible for a pension.