Dentons report into load shedding revealed nothing new - Eskom

Cape Town - The Dentons report into load shedding and infrastructure delays at Eskom revealed nothing new and confirmed the board assessment of areas on which the power utility needed to improve, said Eskom spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe. 

The investigation, launched in 2015, cost a whopping R27m, yet it did not "reveal any new issues", Phasiwe said. This board has therefore questioned the value of a continuous review, "given the time constraints as well as costs involved," Phasiwe said. 

The power utility's spokesperson further said Eskom started implementing a turnaround plan following the recommendations from global law firm Dentons in July 2015 already. 

"By November 2016, the majority of the recommendations (in the report) had been fully implemented," he said in response to a report published on BusinessLive on Monday in which it is alleged that Dentons' findings have been kept in a vault since its completion in July 2015, which is fuelling suspicions of a cover-up of corruption by Eskom management.

The report, which was commissioned in 2015 to investigate the reasons behind widespread load shedding across South Africa and reasons for the delays in the infrastructure build among other things is allegedly only accessible to some board members and raises the risk that Eskom is still being managed by the same people who are accused of corruption, according to BusinessLive. 

READ: No load shedding for the foreseeable future

But Phasiwe said it was the Eskom board's "considered view" that releasing the report, at the time, would have an adverse impact on the employee morale.

"The board’s decision to swiftly implement the recommendations of the review rather than suffer from analysis paralysis as well as not impacting employee morale negatively has been vindicated by the significant achievements of the turnaround strategy," Phasiwe said.

He added that the current Eskom board inherited a company that was in crisis when appointed in 2014. "(The board) faced many challenges that had macroeconomic impacts – all negative."

Phasiwe listed a number of "achievements" that showed the turnaround strategy implemented was indeed successful, including the fact that there has been no load shedding for 18 months, there is excess electricity generation capacity of 5 600MW and the new build programme is delivering (infrastructure) ahead of schedule. 

DA submits Paia 

Meanwhile, the DA said in a statement it intends to submit an application in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) to gain access to the report by Dentons into Eskom, which has been kept under wraps for some two years.

The party's shadow minister of public enterprises Natasha Mazzone said in a statement issued on Monday that South Africans deserve to know how public funds are spent and the report, which cost taxpayers R27m, should be made transparent in the interest of transparency and openness. 

“The (Dentons) report is said to contain information on widespread corruption within the top ranks of Eskom,”Mazzone said.

“No credible reason for keeping the report secret has been given,” Mazzone said in the statement. 

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“Board chairperson and spin doctor extraordinaire, Dr Ben Ngubane, claims the report has not been released because it is being used to rectify the identified problems at Eskom. Yet, (Public Enterprises) Minister (Lynne) Browne has directly contradicted this claim by saying that the report, which took three months to compile, was not thorough enough.”

Brown’s spokesperson Colin Cruywagen told BusinessLive that the minister was unable to comment on the matter, as she was engaged at an ANC Lekgotla. 

At the time of publication on Monday, Fin24 was unable to reach Brown for comment. 

Mazzone claims in her statement that Brown “has no idea of what is really happening in Eskom, no political influence with regards to the running of the entity and is party to another embarrassing scandal that has cost South Africa millions of rands”.

“The more that Brown tries to run and hide, the more the very people she is obviously trying to protect trip her up.”