Eskom's sin

Eskom is the source of energy in South Africa. It is responsible for keeping electricity flowing throughout the country.
However, over the past few years it has discovered by accident (this despite warning and reports decades ago) that their infrastructure, does not meet the growing needs of South Africa. In fact, it was far short, thus resulting in electricty saving scheduled power cuts across the country. Those were wonderful- they even had a timetable where you could check the times you would be without power- talk about kind of them. Still, we sometimes had the unscheduled 'outage' which was just peachy for us. Furtheremore, this was in winter, when we needed power the most. Then the directors recieved major bonuses for a job well done.

This year so far we have been lucky. There have been a few cuts, but they are due to wonderful things like fires at substations etc. So we are told anyway. People at ground level will tell you how poor the maintenance is.
We still though, have our nightly warning at the bottom of the TV, telling us whether we need to turn off everything, except of course the telly.

In addition to this, last year Eskom made a loss of R 9,5 Billion. Now, any normal concern that produced a loss of that magnitude, would not only fire the entire board, but have them exececuted at dawn. Not in Eskom's case though- in this scenario, the CEO gets a hefty 26,7% increase. This, despite the fact that they say they are cash strapped and have to hike the price of electricity even further that the ridiculous price increases we already have already seen. The increase in Mr Maroga's salary is defended by Minister Hogan and the Chairman of Eskom- because 'his salary was significantly below the designated range for the CEOship'. What bull. It is pure and simple greed. Salaries should be performance based. Then I guess they would earn nothing.
In their defence, they did not take their annual bonuses. How big of them. Give with one hand, and then use both to take.

This is a time when the people in power (no pun here) need to set the example. This type of pay increase is disgusting to say the least at a time where Eskom is demanding more money as they cannot cope with what we are already giving them. At a time where the country is in recesion. At a time when unemployment and poverty is growing.

Couple this with the government's lavish spending on luxury cars (and parties) and one has to wonder where their responsibility really lies- with the people they are so well paid to serve, or with the need to line their own pockets and the need to keep up a rich lifestyle.

It is time for those who use our tax money, to start serving the us and stop serving themselves at our expense.