Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter
Photo by: Creamer Media
Eskom's new CEO, Andre de Ruyter, says the power utility is in the process of appointing boards for its generation, transmission and distribution divisions, giving effect to President Cyril Ramaphosa's directive that the utility must develop a new business model to become sustainable.
The plan to split the power utility into three operationally independent entities - which would still fall under an Eskom holding company - was announced by Ramaphosa in his State of the Nation address in February 2019, but has been opposed by unions the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa and the National Union of Mineworkers.
"We are, as Eskom, 100% aligned with what the president said. We intend to give full effect to the commitments that he made," said De Ruyter, speaking at the utility's quarterly state of the system media briefing.
De Ruyter said management had presented a proposal to "divisonalise" Eskom to the utility's board this past week.
"We are in the process of appointing a board for each of these entities - we should be able to finalise these appointments, hopefully, during the course of next week," he said.
"But once that is done we can start the running those three divisions like businesses with full accountability, bottom line accountability and also operational accountability, which will put me and the rest of the members of my management team in a far better position to get our arms around this business and make sure there is accountability throughout the organisation."
He said the split would first result in the creation of three divisions, which over time would lead to legal separation.