Where do we get such a sense of entitlement?

A gigantic whopping R85m lawsuit by Maroga against the utility!

In a civil claim filed at the Johannesburg High Court, the sacked CEO demands what he described as reasonable damages unless he is reinstated to the position he left amid controversy last year.

He is suing his former employer Eskom, its Chairman and Acting CEO Mpho Makwana and Public Enterprises Minister Barbara Hogan.

He accuses the board of illegally conspiring to fire him under the guise of a voluntary resignation. His court papers bear testimony to the lavish lifestyle he thoroughly enjoyed at taxpayers' expense.

Maroga, whose five-year contract was due to expire in 2012, is demanding everything he was entitled to when he was still the utility's CEO, including future earnings.

This includes R14.5m for the loss of salary, R45m for incentives and R7m for other benefits,

According to his claim, Eskom paid R1m a year for dedicated protector and driver, and a driver for his family.

This includes R500 000 a year for security at his Kyalami Estates home, and a R100 000 for general home support. This also includes R1m a year for personal assistance, just under R100 000 a year for a petrol and a garage card for his Mercedes Benz C350 and R5 000 a month for medical aid up to the age of 80.

He also demands R3m to cancel his housing loans. He has a home in the exclusive Kyalami Estates.

In addition to his monthly 2009-2010 salary of R430 833, Maroga's claim details the R45m in incentives he had expected Eskom to pay him during the remainder of his renewable five-year contract.

This is made up of an annual short-term incentive scheme performance bonus of R10.7m, and a long-term retention bonus of R34.3m for the period 2006 to 2012.

He also demands a sincere public apology for the strife and emotional anguish caused by the drama around his departure.

There you are.

I ask myself one question: Where do we get such a sense of entitlement? Why do we think we deserve these huge sums of money when we have not even performed sufficiently enough to deserve them?

What did Maroga do to deserve what he is demanding from the taxpayer?

Is it the black-outs that he subjected us to in 2008 which saw the mines shutting down and other businesses suffering irreparable losses? Does he want to be compensated for the billions that the economy lost every day during those blackouts? Does he want to be rewarded for the 135% tariff hikes (over three years) that he proposed during his disastrous tenure?

Hold your breath, because these tariff hikes are going to leave your economy in tatters.

Pray, because these tariff hikes are going to cripple businesses and households to such an extent you won't want to do businesses or call this country your home.

Those electricity intensive mines will shut down again, and this time for an extended period of time. Kiss foreign direct investment (FDI) goodbye because your country will have become too costly to do business in.

What about those disastrous management decisions? And this man wants all this money to feed his obscene lavish lifestyle despite the chaos he left behind?

Why this entitlement?

This, in fact, brings me back to the Honourable Mr Dali Mpofu, the former SABC CEO who also left under a cloud.

The guy was paid R12m to leave. I repeat, to leave after a series of management blunders, which left the public broadcaster literally bankrupt.

These experiences show us that there is no alignment between performance and reward at these state enterprises.

Why this entitlement?

By Sipho Ngcobo - Moneyweb

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