Johannesburg – A confidential Eskom report shows a vacancy rate of 50% in key posts during the load shedding crisis, the Democratic Alliance said on Monday.

Cobus Schmidt, DA shadow deputy minister of energy, said his party was in possession of the report from Eskom’s Corporate Technical Audit Department authored in late 2007, and circulated internally just a few months before the country was hit by major electricity supply shortages.

Schmidt said in a statement the report showed in clinical detail how Eskom’s management had comprehensively failed to address “critical vacancies” in two critical areas – senior management posts, and short and long term coal procurement positions.

This report supplemented the conclusions drawn by an internal Eskom memo, released by the DA in September, and authored by Susan Olsen, a leading international expert who had been recruited by Eskom, he said.

In that memo Olsen had warned that “without intervention”, Eskom’s primary energy generation faced “collapse”, and would not be able to “meet current needs, much less future requirements”.
Source: Fin24