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Cape Town – Eskom CEO Brian Molefe has managed an extremely tight electricity grid without implementing load shedding, his boss told the Democratic Alliance (DA) on Monday.
Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown said in a statement that DA member of Parliament Natasha Mazzone was “singing off key” when she labelled Molefe’s permanent appointment as CEO “a cadre deployment”.
Mazzone said “the politically useful Brian Molefe as Eskom’s permanent CEO is another unfortunate move to reward ANC loyalty ahead of actual ability”.
“Let me enlightened Ms Mazzone about some achievements since Mr Molefe became acting CE in April,” said Brown.
“We have had 50 days of constant supply to the grid, while there was only two hours of load shedding."
She said Eskom lost 850MW of its 1 500MW from Cahora Bassa, while at the same time unit 2 at Koeberg was being refueled.
"Added together we had a shortage of 1 750MW for most of the more than a week in the first half of this month and still the country experienced only 2 hours of load shedding."
Brown said Molefe has now formed a balanced team and together (with chairperson Ben Ngubane), they have changed Eskom’s maintenance programme, which was normally scheduled from October until May to a 12-month schedule.
“They have succeeded to find the balance between continued maintenance and keeping the lights on. At the same time, they have increased plant stability.”
