More than 5,000 Eskom employees face investigation.
SA Labour News reports that the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has announced that it will be looking into the conduct of more than 5,000 Eskom employees for various offences. The employees have been red flagged in lifestyle audits or are suspected of infractions such as doing business with Eskom and failure to declare their interests.
The power utility currently sits at 43,795 employees, and the investigations aim to find adequate evidence for the NPA to proceed with criminal prosecutions.
In a briefing to MPs on 14 October, the SIU reported that since investigations started in April 2018, 5,452 Eskom employees have been found to have not declared their interests while another 324 were linked to entities that were Eskom vendors. Plus, 135 employees were found to have secured business deals with Eskom to the value of R6 billion.
Additionally, 20 build contractors, 14 coal transport service providers, seven diesel suppliers, three coal supply contracts, two contracts for cloud computing and two contracts at Majuba and Matla power stations were also under investigation.
The SIU said all officials doing business with Eskom would be referred for possible prosecution. Eskom commissioned lifestyle audits on all executive management and had narrowed in on 34 individuals for further investigation.
The SIU said some individuals had been referred to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), others referred to Eskom for disciplinary action, and some had resigned. The SIU noted a tendency for people to quit their jobs once they had been discovered to have committed offences.
