Phone: +27 (0) 830 123 543 Email: info@num.org.za Website: www.num.org.za
Members first
Phone: +27 (0) 11 377 2198/9 Email: tphoko@num.org.za Website: www.num.org.za
Press Statement, 30 October 2019
DARKNESS AND LOAD SHEDDING IS LOADING
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is angered with the Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan's decision to go ahead with the unbundling of Eskom. This is after Minister Gordhan released a turnaround document on government plans to fix Eskom yesterday. The provocateurs of unbundling, which are the investors, rating agencies and the World Bank are celebrating this bad news against South Africans, especially the black majority who are still living under energy poverty, joblessness, hunger and without shelter. The unbundling of Eskom is a precursor to the privatization of electricity in South Africa.
The Eskom roadmap released yesterday is nothing else, but a strategy aimed at pressurising unions to make unnecessary concessions to please White Monopoly Capital bosses in London and Washington.
We met with Eskom on the 23rd of August and they presented a turn-around strategy that does not save Eskom from declining revenue, escalating primary energy costs and a realistic plant maintenance programme. NUM is currently concluding response to the Eskom and Government strategy of stabilizing, separating and growing Eskom, and circulating amongst union structures.
To save ESKOM:
If these demands are not met we will shut-down electricity generation, transmission, and distribution as such plunging the country into darkness. It is not a threat but a promise.
In the meantime, the NUM National Executive Committee took a decision to march to the ANC NEC’s forthcoming meeting. In the process of engaging Eskom on these matters, we realized that by shouting at Eskom Board and Management we are barking at a wrong tree. The real culprit is the ANC government – our own government that we put to power and is now in the business of destroying jobs in order to appease the so-called rating agencies and investors.
For more information, please contact:
Joseph Montisetse: NUM President: 082 809 2391
Paris Mashego: NUM Eskom Energy Sector Coordinator: 079 517 1758
Address:
7 Rissik Street.
Cnr Frederick,
Johannesburg 2001
Tel: 011 377 2111
Web: www.num.org.za
Twitter: @Num Media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/NUM/100860023402167
Its birth was facilitated by comrades Cyril Ramaphosa who rose to be its first General Secretary, James Motlatsi who turned to be its first President, and Elijah Barayi who became its Vice President and later the President of Cosatu in 1985 when the federation was formed. porn