Over 150 employees of the non-operational Rooiwal power station in Tshwane have been reporting to work daily for more than 10 years, earning wages, but without work to do.
The Tshwane metro plans to offer 40-year leases for the Rooiwal and Pretoria West power stations to independent operators who can repurpose and fund them.
The workers said they wanted to be deployed to functioning depots.
‘We are getting paid for sitting and sleeping. For 10 years you just come to eat and sleep. At 8am we drink tea, at 12pm we eat and at 4pm we go home. That is our daily job. We play morabaraba and cards’, said an employee.
The two stations cost the city R300m a year, including staff and maintenance.
‘We are spending the money, we are preserving the power stations, but what are we doing with them?’, Brink said.
‘The simple issue is we’ve got to unlock private investment to do something here and if we can’t, it doesn’t help maintaining the infrastructure.’
Brink said the two power stations had fallen into disuse partly owing to the high cost of stockpiling coal for them, a lack of planning for the future and the need for significant capital investment.
‘A lot of the infrastructure stands, but there is no real power being generated here and that’s been the case since 2012 or 2013. We do have generation capacity here, but it is not enough. We do have an inlet into the grid. And that is also the case with the Pretoria West power station’, he said.
Brink said they are looking at procuring and generating at least 1,000 megawatts of electricity in the next three years.
[Photo: Wikipedia]