Eskom hands out fat performance bonuses

Eskom employees have been awarded lucrative incentive bonuses and salary increases that will leave them overjoyed - and consumers seething.

This revelation comes barely a month after Eskom was granted a 13.3% tariff increase in addition to the 14.2% already approved in December.

Industry sources told the Saturday Star that some staff stood to receive incentive bonuses as high as 23% of their annual packages.

"Workers are delighted about the incentive bonuses, which they thought they were not going to get this year," said one source.

According to an internal memorandum sent to staff, a revised 10-12% wage increase across the board effective from July 1 was agreed on and signed with the unions this week.

The document states that the increases are in acknowledgment and appreciation of the dedication and hard work by employees.

One unionist, who did not want to be identified, said ordinary employees who met their productivity targets by making sure the utility had enough electricity to meet its customers' demand were fully entitled to these "productivity bonuses".

"Employees have an agreement with Eskom that if they produce enough capacity to meet demand, they would be rewarded with productivity bonuses," said the unionist.

Eskom spokesperson Fani Zulu said the new pay agreement included a 10% incentive bonus for all employees besides senior executives.

"The performance appraisal system is a long- established … [Eskom] practice," he said. "Every employee has his or her performance contract [on which the awarding of bonuses is based]".

Zulu added there were different performance indicators for Eskom and its divisions that relate to how much is allocated to each unit for incentives.

Last month, Eskom CEO Jacob Maroga said he would not accept any bonus that might be due to him. This, he said, was a signal of accepting full responsibility for the utility's difficulties.

Other Eskom executives were also said to have agreed to take only 50% of what was due to them in terms of their key performance indicators.

Zulu said this was still the case with all of Eskom's executives.