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According to EskomSePush, it’s been ‘about a month’ since South Africa last experienced load shedding.

We did have a warning that load shedding could happen at short notice last week, so it’s not like we haven’t flirted with danger since then.

The recent explosion at Medupi’s Unit 4, in Lephalale, Limpopo, caused extensive damage, and Eskom CEO André de Ruyter said repair costs “could cost anything between R1,5 billion and R2 billion”.

I’m not sure he has added the standard Eskom tax, though, which basically means you grossly inflate the cost of everything because the public is footing the bill.

Case in point, the saga of Eskom’s knee guards, which News24 reports made de Ruyter “irate”.

So irate that he took matters into his own hands and chased down money, with R1,2 million being paid back to the company at the start of this month.

All in all, three suppliers were paid a total of R3 million to supply Eskom with knee guards.

One of those suppliers failed to deliver a single knee guard, but was paid nonetheless:

De Ruyter apparently asked that Eskom act against suppliers found to have overcharged the power utility last year – the same year the overpayments were made – but personally intervened when little progress was made. The investigation was conducted by Eskom’s internal forensic department…

Eskom, in the past, paid up to R80 000 for a set of knee guards. It costs anything between R100 and R300 at hardware stores. Eskom workers use the knee guards when they scour and clean the insides of pipes, chimneys and other areas at power stations.

Let that sink in.

Figures in the lower hundreds of rands for a knee guard, but Eskom was paying up to R80 000 for a set.

Falcon Knee Pads, from Builders Warehouse, go for R110 a pop.

TAL Contractors Knee Pad, also from Builders Warehouse, go for R260 each.

Tork Craft Knee Pads, for sale on Takealot, are R380.

Look at that, I saved Eskom millions of rands.

The power supplier has now laid criminal complaints with the South African Police Service (SAPS), and is busy trying to recoup the rest of the money from the other two suppliers.

One supplier admitted that they had paid around R4 000 for the knee guards, but charged Eskom R934 000.

Sadly, the knee guard fiasco is just another example of a history of criminally corrupt payments.

Eskom’s chief procurement officer, Solly Tshitangano, was suspended earlier this year, and later fired after he was found guilty of “serious misconduct in failing to carry out his duties”.

Consider this, via Engineering News, from February:

De Ruyter said the procurement division is battling to implement a turnaround strategy. He said Eskom would have paid R238 000 for a wooden mop had he not intervened, but that it has until recently been paying R28 for a roll of single-ply toilet paper and R56 for a bottle of two litre milk…

He blames so-called “free-text procurement”, which means Eskom didn’t have a catalogue of goods, possible suppliers and spending limits. With free-text procurement, officials simply open the computer, type what they want, and buy it at prices they have determined, he said.

Paying R934 000 for knee guards that cost R4 000 isn’t an unintentional error.

Paying R238 000 for a wooden mop isn’t an unintentional error.

Neither is paying R28 for a roll of toilet paper that costs around R4 at Checkers, or R51 per black refuse bag, which is around 20 times the price of your average supermarket.

Somebody’s palms were getting greased somewhere along the line, and these suppliers have probably been getting away with similar for years.

It’s not just the small line items, either. In April, MyBroadband looked at orders placed for various components by buyers at the Matla and Kendal power stations.

Their findings are summarised in this table:

That last item was almost eight times as expensive as it should be.

All of a sudden, the cost of building the Medupi power station (around R135 billion by some accounts) makes more sense.

De Ruyter sure does have his work cut out for him.

[sources:news24&engineeringnews&mybb]