Freeze executive pay at Eskom

05 November 2014

I will today write a letter to Minister of Public Enterprises, Lynne Brown, urging her to impose a moratorium on pay hikes for the exorbitant pay enjoyed by Eskom's clearly failing executives.

Eskom paid its top executives a total of R60 million in the 2014 financial year, up from R57.4 million the year before. With 9 members on Eskom's executive committee, it is shocking that R24.4 million was paid to three individuals: The CEO, the Financial Director and the Operations Director.

The CEO took home a pay package of R15.4 million which is the highest salary paid by the company ever. His 2013 salary was R8.5 million. 

It is disgusting that Eskom executives are being paid record salaries as the country has to face disruptive load shedding. In any private sector environment, someone who oversees such a monumental failure would be fired but at Eskom the salaries just keep going up and up no matter the performance of the organisation. 

Executive pay must be frozen at its current level until Eskom has overcome its supply shortage.

The ANC and its cadre deployments at our parastatals have made a few people very rich, but this has cost our country billions.

We will not allow it to continue. It's time for Eskom to tighten its belt and to stop rewarding poor performance.

Statement issued by Natasha Michael MP, DA Shadow Minister Public Enterprises, November 5 2014

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