Eskom bleeding engineers and technicians

Hundreds of skilled artisans, technicians, and engineers are walking away from South Africa’s state-owned companies, including Eskom, and they aren’t hiring enough qualified workers to compensate for the losses.

This is according to responses to parliamentary questions directed at Eskom and Transnet representatives.

Eskom said that as of September 2022, its workforce had dropped by 6,737 employees over ten years.

“As at September 2022, Eskom had 39,871 employees, representing a net reduction of 6,737 over ten years,” it stated.

“During the period in question, 25,317 employees exited the system either through retirement, resignations, or death.”

It said it had hired 17,207 employees over the same period, of which 10,942 were permanent, and 6,265 were employed on fixed-term contracts.

The table below summarises Eskom’s workforce exits and hires over the last ten years.

“The higher level of exits as compared to hires was in line with Eskom’s headcount management strategy that came into effect in FY2019, as Eskom aimed to optimise its workforce and escalating manpower costs, while retaining prioritised core, critical and scarce skills,” it added.

Regarding its more-recent exits and hires — specifically those over the past three years — Eskom has lost 270 engineers, 232 technicians, and 189 artisans but did not specify how many professionals it had hired to replace them.

Meanwhile, Transnet recorded 963 resignations and retirements but has increased the number of engineers in its workforce by 62 over the past three years.

At the same time, Transnet has recorded a net loss of 12 technicians and 381 artisans.

Below is a breakdown of Transnet’s engineer, artisan, and technician exits and hires.

Eskom’s efforts to hire skilled experts

Efforts to bring skilled professionals back to Eskom have been somewhat underwhelming.

At the request of public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan, labour union Solidarity provided a list of 300 “turnaround agents” — people with experience and skills willing to help turn Eskom around.

Of the 300 listed skilled experts provided by Solidarity, Eskom had only appointed 18 (6%) of them as of 19 September 2022.

The relatively small number of appointees was reportedly due to pushback from political leaders over the “inclusivity” of its skills procurement plans.

The state-owned power utility subsequently launched an online skills crowdsourcing platform.

The power utility announced that it was developing its digital crowdsourcing tool on Friday, 16 September 2022. It officially launched the platform on 8 November.

Eskom said the tool allows people with the required expertise to submit their details online to help address the utility’s severe skill shortage.

“Crowdsourcing differs from recruitment in that it is triggered by specific technical challenges, is not linked to a permanent position, and it targets a talent pool that consists of highly skilled and experienced persons,” Eskom said.

The power utility said it would consider candidates who meet the following criteria:

• Be a highly skilled electricity generation expert or technical professional, including engineers, power plant operators/controllers, artisans, and technicians;
• Have over ten years of related experience;
• Be willing and able to support Eskom; and
• Be willing to transfer skills and expertise.

Eskom said it had received a staggering response to the launch, with the database quickly accumulating 238 individuals.

Of these applicants, 153 had been shortlisted as potentially active, skilled, and willing candidates.

The power utility said around 25 of the shortlisted candidates had been chosen for the first phase of the crowdsourcing intake, with their work set to commence between November and December 2022.

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