ANC calls on ministers to meet over Eskom
The ANC has called for a meeting between the finance, energy and public enterprises departments' ministers to resolve the ongoing Eskom debacle.
|||Johannesburg - The African National Congress has called for a meeting between the finance, energy and public enterprises departments’ ministers to resolve the ongoing debacle over the power utility’s coal contract with the Gupta-owned Tegeta mining company.
“It has been unfortunate that Eskom and the National Treasury have also taken their disagreements to the public domain on matters relating to procurement practices at the state owned enterprise. The ANC calls for an urgent meeting between the ministries of public enterprises, treasury and energy to decisively deal with this matter in a manner that promotes public confidence,” ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe told reporters in Johannesburg following a national working committee meeting on Monday.
On Monday, the National Treasury said it had since April repeatedly tried to get information from Eskom relating to Tegeta, including about money advanced to the company, but met with “resistance”. Treasury was probing all Eskom contracts worth more than R10 billion in order to clamp down on corruption.
The department said its unmet demands included a request for a list of payments to Tegeta and invoices received from the company between September and the end of April.
Treasury added that its director general, Lungisa Fuzile, subsequently wrote to Eskom to ask that it withdraw its insistence that “all the Tegeta coal contracts with Eskom have been extensively audited by various agencies, including National Treasury”, whilst clearly that was not the case. Treasury said it would release its report on the contracts “with or without Eskom’s cooperation”.
Eskom hit back, saying it had fully cooperated with the Treasury probe, amidst reports that it was sold more than R130 of sub-standard coal by Tegeta.
Public Enterprise Minister Lynne Brown, who oversees parastatals, on Tuesday reportedly urged Eskom to hand over all documents relating to Tegeta to National Treasury.
African News Agency