Gordhan hammered for Eskom settlement claims

LEADERS of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) have condemned Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan for comments at a hastily arranged press briefing earlier this week.

Gordhan had claimed that Eskom had in principle reached an agreement with striking workers to return to work, after South Africa was plunged into Stage 6 load shedding – two-and-half hours of power blackouts at a time.

The union bosses were angry with Gordhan, saying he had jeopardised wage talks by pre-empting an outcome and demanded that he withdraw the claim that an agreement had been reached between the utility and its striking workers.

NUM general secretary William Mabapa and Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim said: “We have not come to any agreement with Eskom. Our members have not even had the chance to see the proposal and he is rushing to the media to claim there is an agreement.”

The unions said they would be meeting today at the Central Bargaining Forum (CBF) where they would formally respond to the offer made by Eskom, after having discussed it with the workers.

NUM national spokesperson Livhuwani Mammburu said Gordhan’s comments were reckless and irresponsible for someone who was a minister and would jeopardise the wage negotiations and affect how Eskom’s offer was received at the CBF today.

Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said: “Although there are still high levels of absenteeism and demonstrations at some of the power stations, some of the workers have returned. This, due to intimidation of working staff that continues, is still not sufficient to ease capacity constraints and therefore the load-shedding.”

Eskom announced Stage 6 would be implemented from 5am until midnight on Friday and that a minimum of Stage 4 would be required continuously over the weekend.