Eskom Gobbles South African Taxpayer's Money And Fails To Increase Electricity Production

From a SA friend

  

I went to an Allan Gray Presentation yesterday and Andrew Lapping (excellent speaker) gave some fascinating information on Eskom. The background to this was the mini-budget and how Govt spending has increased dramatically but unfortunately has been used in a very unproductive manner. He mentioned that we all hear about how the SOE’s are being run badly but to give more perspective on this, he drilled down into Eskom, the biggest SOE. From 2003 to 2017, the electricity output has remained flat (ie no increase at all). Now if a company’s production remained flat over a 14 year period, one would assume that there had been a reduction in costs and that the company had become more efficient and productive with fewer resources. Now, lets look at Eskom . . . . In 2003, they had 32,000 employees In 2017, they have 47,000 employees (a 50% increase in employment with zero increase in productivity). One could think that maybe they employed many low paid employees to help the unemployment situation. Not so . . . . In 2003, the 32,000 employees had an average annual salary of R200,000 In 2017, the 47,000 employees have an average annual salary of R825,000 (if they had inflationary increases, it would have been an average income of R400,000) So, in summary, over the 14 year period, their production remained flat, their employment increased by 50% and their average annual salary quadrupled. Could your company survive if it did anything like Eskom ? And now we know where our tax money is going !