Numsa slams Eskom for ‘misleading’ media over workers’ salaries
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has accused Eskom of lying about workers’ salaries at the power utility.
The union is expected to meet Eskom over the second round of wage talks from Monday.
The union's spokesperson Phakamile Hlubi-Majola says Eskom is sharing fake news about worker's salaries to the media.
"As we prepare to meet to discuss workers’ demands we wish to send out a word of caution to journalists to kindly resist the temptation to promote fake news about what workers at Eskom are earning.
"The spokesperson of Eskom Sikonathi Mantshantsha falsely claimed that the average employee at Eskom earns an average salary of R773 000 per year," adds Majola.
"This was a deliberate lie told to the media in an attempt to misdirect the public’s focus away from the true drivers of Eskom’s costs. He wants to perpetuate the lie that the R33 billion Eskom wage bill is the reason why Eskom is collapsing."
The power utility has implemented Stage 2 load shedding which started at 5 pm on Sunday evening and expected to run until 10 pm on Tuesday.
Hlubi-Majola believes the executive management need to account for failing to solve the load shedding crisis.
"We condemn the executive management at Eskom for continuing to impose misery on the public. They continue to demonstrate their total inability to solve the crisis of load shedding.
"It is a total disgrace that the GCEO Andre De Ruyter and the COO Jan Oberholzer are so incompetent that they continue to place our economic outlook in jeopardy because they cannot guarantee energy supply.
"They have ignored our demands to implement quality maintenance and now they cannot keep the lights on."
