EDITORIAL: New Eskom boss’s first big challenge

New Eskom boss Dan Marokane reached the 100-day milestone in his new position last week. For the first time since his appointment as CEO he sat down with journalists for one-on-one interviews to talk about what he hopes to achieve while leading the troubled state-owned power company.

Unsurprisingly, at the very top of his list, is bringing an end, for good, to load-shedding. Eskom was already heading in the right direction to achieve this when Marokane joined, thanks to the R254bn bailout it received from Treasury last year, which supported the implementation of a well-planned and executed maintenance programme.

But there is still much left to do. Marokane will have to steer Eskom through its unbundling and he will also need to prove that Eskom can achieve financial sustainability without further help from the fiscus.

To do this he will have to ensure that a workable solution is found to address municipal arrear debt owed to Eskom which stands at about R74bn. According to Marokane, the Treasury’s municipal debt relief programme is not the solution it was hoped to be.

A significant portion of the arrear debt is owned by the 70 municipalities that are participating in the programme. Still, only 4% of them have been able to comply with the conditions of the debt relief.

Solving the municipal debt problem will require a similar effort and focus by Eskom and the government as was directed to addressing the energy crisis through a structure such as the national energy crisis committee.