Eskom has confirmed that it continues to do business with companies found guilty of corruption and that stole money from the power utility.
Speaking to the SABC, Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said they do not blacklist corrupt companies.
Instead, they look at individual contracts which these companies have with Eskom.
Mantshantsha said many companies that had to pay back money that they pilfered from Eskom through corrupt dealings are still doing business with them.
“These [corrupt] companies have more than one contract with Eskom. So yes, they are still doing business with Eskom,” he said.
He said Eskom only considers corruption on a contract-by-contract basis. They can therefore cancel a contract that involved corruption, but it does not affect other contracts from the same company.
If companies that were found guilty of corruption have other contracts which were not affected by the corruption, there is no reason to remove them, Mantshantsha said.
South African taxpayers have suffered tremendously because of corruption at Eskom, which raises the question of why the power utility still happily work with corrupt companies.
Commenting on this issue, Mantshantsha explained that “what is said about companies behaving unethically can equally be said about Eskom”.
“Those are the facts. People who have worked for Eskom at the time — and indeed some of them may still work for Eskom — behaved unethically,” he said.
When quizzed on why Eskom finds it acceptable to continue to work with companies that acted in an abhorrent manner and put South Africa at risk, Mantshantsha justified it by saying Eskom employees were also corrupt.
“The same [unethical conduct] can be said for people who worked for Eskom who had to leave Eskom,” he said.