Johannesburg - The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in the Highveld Region in Mpumalanga has urged law enforcement agencies to arrest former Eskom Group Chief Executive Officer André de Ruyter for his alleged role in awarding Fidelity a R500 million security contract.
Malekutu Bizzah Motubatse, NUM Highveld regional chairperson, said his union had noted with disgust the rapaciousness and money laundering tactics unleashed by De Ruyter.
Motubatse said that to their astonishment the “so-called proponents of anti-corruption were quiet" as they were not aware of the R500m that was afforded to a security company, Fidelity.
“The NUM Highveld Region strongly believes that there is unfaithfulness displayed in this whole process, and we are calling for law enforcement to thoroughly investigate the matter and prosecute all the greedy looters.
“We are calling for such investigations to be extended to the former COO Jan Oberholzer as we believe that there was no need for Eskom to pay such an amount of money,” he said.
Motubatse said this matter was a serious security concern and their conviction was that South Africa had competent law enforcement agencies that had the capacity and capabilities to deal with it.
“The former CEO De Ruyter just created a crisis so that he could greedily loot the power utility. The NUM Highveld Region believes that if this amount, R500m, was looted by a black manager the proponents of anti-corruption would have made a cacophony. Those proponents of anti-corruption would have visited the nearest police stations to open a case and make sure that the case was investigated,” Motubatse said.
He said black managers in Eskom were always associated with corruption, but the opposite happened when that manager was of a different race. He said that what angered the NUM Highveld Region most was the fact that the tendering process ran for only three months.
“We are calling for law enforcement agencies to wake up and smell the coffee. De Ruyter must be arrested. The reason that he left the country is not because his life is under threat, but because he is on a honeymoon enjoying the R500m.
“The NUM Highveld Region is mobilising its structures in order to embark in a serious protest so that De Ruyter can pay back the money,” Motubatse said.
However, earlier this month Eskom defended its decision to award the R500m security contract signed with the Fidelity Services Group a few months before De Ruyter resigned.
In a statement, the power utility said everything was above board in the procurement of the contract that cost the power utility just shy of R1.7m a month.