Eskom’s biggest mistake

[BusinessTech]

Eskom’s biggest mistake

As large parts of the country were plunged into darkness, questions have been raised as to how the power utility has once again run into trouble.

 

[R13...]

Yeah they never should have built those power stations or even demoth balled the old ones. They were just dishonest about the underlying problems which was that they neglected maintenance and renewal at operating plants.

 

[Cius]

A decent summary of the issue. I think some new power stations where needed but not sure if we should have done Kusile. Medupe was already a stretch and needs a lot of repairs to get it fully operational. For the biggest mistakes are the way the government has failed to deal with the culture of non-payment for over 20 years now. Soweto has a balooning debt and there is just no political will to tackle non-payers meaning more and more people chose to stop payment in townships. If they had played hardball with defaulting municipalities and consumers from the start the financial position would be very different now.

The other huge mistake and for the biggest one is the looting that happened over the last 10 years. The coal contracts that were signed with the Gupta's, the incompetent managers put in place, it all adds up to the mess we are seeing now. And the vast majority of that damage will not be easy to undo. The problem is failure is not an option. If you Eskom goes down our country will have an economy like the Congo or Moz in a very short space of time.

 

[Bewlen]

It's actually very simple: cadre deployment/BEE. No. Other. Reasons.
If you put people in a position to do a job that they do not have the capability to do, they will fail at that job.

 

[WaxLyrical]

Yeah they never should have built those power stations or even demoth balled the old ones. They were just dishonest about the underlying problems which was that they neglected maintenance and renewal at operating plants.

Wasn't the power stations themselves but the cost involved which was obviously stinking of corruption and mismanagement.

 

[Temujin]

“These plants are running way behind schedule, they’re over budget and the bits that are complete don’t work properly,” he said.

“They are probably the single largest disaster in South Africa’s economic history.”

Not at all, they're doing exactly what they were designed to do, funnel and loot as much money as possible