Page 13 - AfrElec Week 30

AfrElec
NEWS IN BRIEF
AfrElec
P E R F O R M A N C E
Eskom continues to show progress in restoring governance and improving efficiencies as part of its turnaround plan; despite major operational and financial challenges facing the company
Eskom’s nancial, operational and environmental performance will continue to be challenging for some time before signi cant improvements are realised. However there has been encouraging progress to instil governance and to root out nancial mismanagement, malfeasance, and
maladministration.
A er its appointment last year, the
board’s focus was on three key issues – addressing governance failures and rooting out corruption, the weak nancial position, and the declining revenue, all of which were threatening the sustainability of the company.
“On restoring governance, Eskom is cooperating with regulatory bodies and
law enforcement agencies conducting
major investigations into matters of fraud and corruption a ecting the organisation. Investigations are by nature lengthy, given legislative processes” outgoing Eskom Group CEO Phakamani Hadebe said.
Nevertheless, we still achieved signi cant progress in addressing a number of governance issues. Around 95% of the open disciplinary cases relating to procurement breaches have since been nalised, with about 10% of cases resulting in employee exits. Lifestyle audits of 365 senior employees have been conducted to ensure that
those employees comply with the highest standards of integrity and ethics. e high
risk cases have been handed over to the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) for further investigation.
Furthermore, with the restoration of a culture of ethics and whistle-blowing, there has been an increase in total whistle-blowing incidents reported resulting in investigations and employee exits.
Progress was also made in cleaning up
the prior year audit modi cation relating
to the completeness of irregular, fruitless
and wasteful expenditure and losses due to criminal conduct. Despite our e orts the auditors issued a modi ed opinion relating to the accuracy and reasonableness of the PFMA reporting. Irregular expenditure for the current year totalled ZAR6.6 billion, of which ZAR1.5 billion relates to new transgressions. e remaining ZAR5.1 billion is attributable to issues which had been detected previously and are continuing until the related contract is condoned, or to prior year transgressions identi ed during the year as part of the clean- up process.
ESKOM, July 30, 2019
Week 30 31•July•2019
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