[miningmx.com] – ESKOM has suspended its CEO, Tshediso Matona, and three other senior executives, whilst it allows for a three-month independent inquiry the scope of which may extend to the future structure of the entity.
The executives responsible for finance and commercial activities, Tsholofelo Molefe (CFO) and Dan Marokane who is the group executive for commercial, were suspended. Matshela Koko, group executive for technology and commercial is the fourth executive who will take three-months ‘gardening leave’.
Each of the suspended executives’ responsibilities will be taken up by an acting manager led by Zethembe Khoza, who will be acting CEO. Nonkululeko Veleti, Abram Masango, and Edwin Mabelane who be responsible for finance, group capital, and technology and commercial activities respectively.
Eskom chairman, Zola Tsotsi, was at pains to point out that the inquiry was a fact-finding endeavour that would put the firm’s cash flow, primary energy activities, capital project delays and the poor performance of the generation units under the spotlight.
He added that there was no ‘investigation’ into suspected malfeasance by any of the senior executives; rather, the executives had been suspended so that the inquiry could proceed in an unfettered manner, he said.
However, inappropriate actions would be dealt with if they were uncovered during the period of the study.
“There isn’t a problem,” said Zola who added later in response to a question that he did not believe Eskom was in crisis. “There is no culpability insinuated in the decision. There is no sinister hidden agenda,” he said.
He said the inquiry, which would be run by a yet-to-be-named party, possibly an auditing firm, would aim at establishing “a base line” from which future decisions about the management of Eskom would be taken.
“There needs to be an accurate baseline where the institution is able to better make decisions going forward,” said Zola. He added that the South African government was supportive of the inquiry but revealed few details of its provenance.
Asked what Eskom’s board would do if the inquiry uncovered fatal flaws within the organisation, such as its structure, Tsotsi said: “The baseline we want to arrive at would probably be to tackle some of the issues differently that we do today which would include the idea of: is this the correct structure that serves Eskom’s needs?”.
“While the current scope of the inquiry would not address structure, [such findings] would prompt the board to look at that. There is potential for that to happen,” he said.
Matona, who was formerly director-general of the public enterprises department, was appointed CEO of Eskom by the South African cabinet in April 2014. Before the end of the year, the Eskom board was also reshuffled.
“We would like to assure our customers and employees that this was done in the best interest of all our stakeholders, and we hope to come out of this with a better grasp of all the challenges facing the business, and most importantly, with solutions,” said Tsotsi in Eskom’s statement.
