Eskom interim CEO Collin Matjila is on the spot\u00a0over a R43-million contract to sponsor The New Age’s (TNA) breakfast briefings, the Mail and Guardian reported on Friday.<\/p>\n
The new contract commits the cash-strapped power utility to sponsor around one TNA breakfast briefing per month for three years, the newspaper’s AmaBhungane investigative unit reported.<\/p>\n
Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown reportedly confirmed that she had been approached with concerns about Matjila’s approval of the contract.<\/p>\n
Eskom board chairman Zola Tsotsi said the situation should not be \u201cprejudged\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a little premature to comment until I get feedback… to tell me what they [the subcommittee] uncovered.\u201d<\/p>\n
The contract apparently overshot Eskom’s sponsorship budget and allegedly did not contain an exit clause, which the parastatal’s lawyers allegedly raised concerns about prior to Matjila’s approval of the contract.<\/p>\n
Acting group commercial executive Matshela Koko said the TNA contract was part of Eskom’s \u201ccontinuing relationship\u201d with the company, which predated Matjila’s tenure as interim CEO.<\/p>\n
Spokesman for the Gupta family – the owners of TNA – Gary Naidoo said: \u201cThis contract was negotiated not with the then acting chief executive, but with the functional executives at Eskom and Nazeem Howa, TNA chief executive\u201d.<\/p>\n
He declined to comment on the Gupta’s relationship with Matjila.<\/p>\n
Matjila could not be reached for comment, Sapa said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eskom interim CEO Collin Matjila is on the spot\u00a0over a R43-million contract to sponsor The New Age’s (TNA) breakfast briefings, the Mail and Guardian reported on Friday. The new contract commits the cash-strapped power utility to sponsor around one TNA breakfast briefing per month for three years, the newspaper’s AmaBhungane investigative unit reported. Public Enterprises … Continue reading “Eskom and Gupta’s big breakfast contract”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[10365,456,6239,10367,10366],"class_list":["post-16550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-breakfast-meetings","tag-eskom","tag-gupta","tag-sponsorship-budget","tag-tna"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16550"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16552,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16550\/revisions\/16552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}