The Cabinet of South Africa has approved the appointment of Tshediso Matona as the new CEO of ESKOM-State Owned Electricity Producer. He was formerly the Director General of the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE).
This announcement was made by Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown during a cabinet meeting in Cape Town.
Matona comes in to fill the position after the former CEO of ESKOM Brian Dames resigned end of March 2014. Dames had announced his resignation intentions in December 2013.
Matona is a seasoned Bureaucrat but has never been in the leadership position of a large corporation. He served in the Department of Trade and Industry as the Director General before being appointed for the same position in DPE in 2009.
Before the two appointments, he worked as the trade diplomat for the South African Mission to the United Nations and World Trade Organization in Switzerlamd and Geneva from 1996 to 1998.
The appointment of Matona comes in amid expectations for the government of South Africa to offer additional finances to support the power firm which has been facing US $ 20.94bn shortfall of revenue for five years -2013 to 2018.
This shortfall is partly due to the fact that the power utility firm had been granted 8 percent yearly tariff increase for the five years instead of 16 percent they had requested from National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA).
Brown stressed that Matona has indepth knowledge of the problems that ESKOM is facing because he has chaired the interdepartmental task team with members from DPE, the National Treasury and the Department of Energy all of which were set up to look for solutions to help ESKOM.
