Eskom CEO seat has three candidates, will be filled by year-end, says board chair Mteto Nyati

Eskom board chair Mteto Nyati told parliament the power utility was confident a permanent group CEO would be appointed by the end of the year as the board has given public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan three “appointable candidates” for the position.

“Our minister is driving a process to appoint a CEO by the end of this calendar year. In March, the board approved the Eskom recovery plan to achieve 65% of energy availability factor by March 2024 and 70% energy availability factor by March 2025,” he said.

On Wednesday Nyati told parliament’s portfolio committee on public enterprises the board expected management to set the right tone for Eskom’s financial and operational recovery with improved plant performance and consequence management for corruption.

The briefing comes after Eskom released an annual report and financial statement showing its steepest loss (R23.9bn), most frequent load-shedding (280 days) and worst energy availability factor (56%) of any financial year to date.

“This set of results we are not proud of. By any measure this is a poor set of results,” Nyati said.

The briefing to parliament took place on the same morning load-shedding escalated from stage 2 to stage 4 due to insufficient emergency reserves and generation capacity as well as four units not returning to service as planned.

Nyati said the utility’s generation recovery plan finalised in March must resolve the challenges. He said Eskom has relied on open cycle gas turbines to supplement generation capacity, which can only be limited by improving the reliability and availability of the coal fleet.

“While these results are disappointing, Eskom management and the board are working hard to ensure tomorrow is better than today,” he said.

Portfolio committee chair Khaya Magaxa said while the committee appreciated the progress Eskom had made in recent months to keep load-shedding at low levels, the legislature preferred to see power cuts done away with altogether.

“We don’t want stage 2, but at least it’s promising. We don’t want that promise to be reversed. We want the promise to be improved upon,” he said.

Deputy minister of public enterprises Obed Bapela said the delay in tabling the 2022-23 annual report and financial statements was due to issues beyond Eskom’s control in the realm of auditing. He said Eskom leadership took the urgent need to improve the state of the utility seriously.

“Load-shedding is a serious issue. We are dealing with the annual report but the issues of the moment will arise because it is a worrying factor. There are questions about when we are ending load-shedding, and that is a question  Eskom will address,” he said.

In terms of leadership, Eskom has arguably had its rockiest year on record, with former CEO André de Ruyter resigning in dramatic fashion earlier this year and former chair Mpho Makwana resigning in October.

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