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Bloomberg
Almost 15 months into the job, and the boss of South Africa’s state-owned electricity company is getting to grips with issues spanning corruption to defective power plants that threatened to collapse the grid.
“The days of surprises are over,†Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. CEO Phakamani Hadebe said in an interview. “We just have to speed up the process of turning things around.’’
Hadebe said a “breakdown in corporate governance’’ and the financial viability of the business were the biggest challenges when he was appointed after President Cyril Ramaphosa took over leadership of the country. The CEO also faced increasing operational issues, forcing Eskom to implement periodic power cuts from December through March. Now the situation is under control, he said.
The utility, which provides 95 percent of the electricity to the most industrialised nation in Africa, announced earlier this month a plan to minimise power cuts after an assessment with a technical review team identified the root causes of unplanned breakdowns.