By Staff Writer
South Africa’s energy utility Eskom is considering paying its 47,053 employees R150 million in bonus for avoiding power cuts, according to The Sunday Times report.
The submission comes a month after the power utility reportedly paid R4.2-billion in performance bonuses to staff, and two months after Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown approved bonuses totaling R13-million for its executives, including former CEO Brian Molefe, former chief financial officer Anoj Singh and suspended acting CEO Matshela Koko.
“I cannot think of any reason to pay bonuses to Eskom employees for doing their job: keeping the lights on. . .I would like to believe Eskom’s interim leadership will take prudent financial decisions,” Brown told the newspaper.
Last month, Eskom published its 2017 financial results.
The results showed that Eskom’s profit dropped to R870 million loss in 2016/17 financial year versus R5.1 billion profit in the previous reporting period.
Eskom was given a qualified audit owing to irregularities and it now has 10% more debt than it did the previous year.
The company’s revenue increased by 7.9% to R177 billion, while there was an EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization) of R38 billion representing an increase of 14.4%.
Eskom’s own generation cost decreased by 8.5% to R60 billion with total primary energy costs down by 2.3%.
