Message from the Eskom Chairman – Valli Moosa

Let me take this opportunity to pay a special tribute to the people of Eskom – the women and men of Eskom who take to the trenches, ensuring that the lights in South Africa keep burning. During my tenure as chairman of Eskom, I have not received a single report of an Eskom employee who has abandoned his/her post even at the height of the crisis.

Such loyalty, dedication and selfless contributions must be commended.  Eskom is led by a top team with a long track record of excellent service to this company and the country in general. I would like to thank each of the people who served in the Eskom leadership team personally: Jacob Maroga, Bongani Nqwababa, Brian Dames, Erica Johnson, Steve Lennon, Mpho Letlape, Mongezi Ntsokolo, Ayanda Noah, Johnny Dladla and Ehud Matya.

I would also like to thank my fellow board members for their counsel over the past three years and wish them well in providing guidance and assurance to this important national asset. They have spent an enormous amount of additional time in special board meetings this year, to address the various challenges and I thank them for their invaluable time. I would like to make special mention of our international board members – Brian Count, chairman of Progressive Energy, Lars Joseffson, president and chief executive of Vattenfall, a Swedish power company, and Mustafa Bello, executive secretary and chief executive officer of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission – for the international perspective they brought into our deliberation in the board.

Finally, it is my sincere wish that South Africa as a nation will also become an integral part of the solution to the challenges at hand and will work with Eskom. Let us all conserve our vital energy sources – the lifeblood of our economy.

Message from the Eskom Chief Executive – Jacob Maroga

While our current focus is understandably on responding to the demand for electricity we continue to ensure that overall good practices are in place and that we do not take our attention off our triple bottom line. We are determined to make a positive difference through our continued support for the United Nations Global Compact. As a signatory to the compact, the world’s largest voluntary corporate responsibility initiative, we commit to show leadership in the compact’s 10 principles around labour standards, the environment and anti-corruption.

Attracting and retaining appropriately skilled staff is central to ensuring a reliable and secured electricity system. As we accelerated this massive capacity expansion programme, we have also intensified our efforts to bring more skilled people into the organisation. Core, critical and scarce skills have been identified with particular attention given to these priority areas. We know that major build projects are happening in other parts of the world, and as such Eskom competes for the same skills set. This is why the Eskom resourcing strategy had to be all encompassing addressing, among others, training and development, recruitment, succession management, retention and incentives, and pipelining.

The total staff composition of Eskom has shown a net growth of 2 208 over the reporting year following national and international recruitment campaigns. A programme to attract retired Eskom employees with needed skills is also proving successful.

Eskom remains committed to developing its employee value proposition to ensure it remains an employer of choice.  The past year has been a testimony to the old adage “through adversity comes strength”. We are heartened by South Africa’s response, especially when asked to conserve electricity. We are also grateful to all who have made a contribution to the work of the organisation during the past year.

Our employees have been and remain indispensable to our organisation. I would like to pay a special tribute to all of the men and women of Eskom for their loyalty, dedication and commitment to the task at hand.