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Cape Town - Minister of Public Enterprises Lynne Brown appointed the best candidate to help rescue Eskom, according to the Consulting Engineers South Africa (Cesa).
Brown announced the appointment of Tshediso Matona as Eskom’s new CEO on Wednesday.
Matona will take up his new role in September and will lead Eskom to take it through a strategic change of direction, Brown said at the time.
“We believe that Matona brings with him fresh ideas to resuscitate the ailing state power utility and we are confident that he will come up with fresh new strategies to navigate Eskom out of power outages and load shedding that has become the norm," said Cesa CEO Lefadi Makibinyane in a statement.
He said that Eskom needs both the financial and technical discipline to tackle its operational and financial challenges.
“Matona has the best experience and exposure to take Eskom forward and contribute to national power security that will ensure the accelerated growth of the economy of South Africa,” said Makibinyane.
Matona's most significant challenge is to plug the nearly R220bn funding shortfall.
Matona, holds a masters degree in development economics from the University of East Anglia and cut his teeth in government as a trade negotiator in Geneva at the World Trade Organisation.
He has been the director general at the department of public enterprises since January 2011 and was also the director general for the department of trade and industry for five years from 2006-2010.
The Black Business Council (BBC) also hailed the appointment on Motana, reported Sapa.
"The BBC wishes Mr Matona great success in his position and will always be willing to support Eskom in its efforts to provide a reliable and affordable service to South African consumers," the council said on Wednesday.
On Sunday City Press outlined five tasks on Motona's immediate to-do list:
- Together with the interministerial task team, plug the funding gap and avoid a downgrade to junk status by ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, which has placed Eskom on credit watch.
- Convince the National Energy Regulator to grant tariff increases to Eskom from 2014 to 2017.
- Cut costs as part of a five-year plan by up to R60bn.
- Ensure Medupi’s first boiler comes online by December and is fully operational by the middle of next year, as promised.
- Reverse diminishing plant availability.
- Improve maintenance capability and catch up on the maintenance backlog.
- Fin24 with agencies
