BOOTS ON THE GROUND

Troops not much help at power stations

● Soldiers who have spent more than a month guarding Eskom power stations have had little effect on the fight against criminals sabotaging the infrastructure, say insiders.

This week, the Sunday Times visited five power stations in Mpumalanga: Grootvlei, Duvha, Tutuka, Kendal and Matla. At some of them, solitary soldiers could be seen from the security checkpoints outside.

Soldiers were originally deployed to four power stations in the province in December following “strong evidence of security threats”. On December 17, Eskom confirmed they had been deployed to guard against sabotage. At the time, the military’s deployment document said state intelligence indicated imminent and direct threats to specific critical Eskom infrastructure, including power stations, and that 200 military personnel had been deployed.

This week, one general manager who spoke on condition of anonymity said the soldiers had not helped in the fight against crime, through no fault of their own.

“What are fewer than five soldiers going to do at a power station anyway? If you drive in through the main gate you will immediately see their presence. And by presence I mean one soldier permanently on his phone and a few others smoking,” the general manager said.

The man said criminality was a problem but “sabotage is rampant”.

“We have cable theft, inferior coal being swapped for coal, diesel being stolen from our yellow plant [vehicles] — these consist of bulldozers and earth-moving machines. Yet, we expect soldiers trained in warfare to stop these activities,” he said.

“We have the right people. If we use our plant, people and business processes optimally, it will work. We also don’t even need the so-called old men to be called back. Our current workforce is more than capable of doing the job. We just need the criminality to be put to a stop.”

The man said sabotage incidents were more frequent and were either politically motivated to undermine the government or committed by aggrieved workers passed over for promotions or other perks.

“Soldiers won’t help. The only way to stop these activities is to deploy either Hawks investigators or SSA [State Security Agency] agents under cover. We need to work out the scope and size of the criminal syndicates and rip them out,” he said.

The soldiers, he said, “basically walk where they want to, but because they are in the SANDF they don’t take orders from Eskom management. Nobody at Eskom asked for the army to be deployed, because everybody knows it is a waste.”

The general manager said the arrests thus far have been of “low-level criminals” but Eskom needs the police “to catch the people paying them and giving them orders”.

The man said he will miss Eskom CEO André de Ruyter when he leaves at the end of March.

“His focus on the criminals was much needed. Most power stations are run by engineers with years of experience in power generation, but we know very little about catching criminals.”

A source at Grootvlei power station agreed the soldiers were of little help.

“You will only see them once you are already past the security checkpoint. That will not scare off potential criminals on the outside. If you live in the surrounding community you will see a soldier only if he or she walks to the shop to buy a cold drink. Otherwise, after shift, they are transported back to Balfour where they live.”

An insider at Kendal power station told the Sunday Times they have “at least” one sabotage incident a month.

“Recently someone closed a valve at a critical time, leading to a unit being shut down. There is CCTV covering the area where the valve is but we don’t have cameras covering other cameras. On the footage of the incident you just see an arm reaching out and turning the camera away,” the insider said.

At Tutuka power station, a contractor told the Sunday Times that law enforcement agencies hadn’t made a dent in criminal activities.

The contractor, however, welcomed De Ruyter’s impending departure.

“André was never going to work. We laughed when we heard he was being appointed. This place has a culture of its own. Some people spend their entire lives working for Eskom. They might change power stations a few times, but they stay in Eskom. Now they bring in some guy from Pretoria with his corporate ideas and expect the entire culture to change,” he said outside Tutuka’s gates, where soldiers have also been deployed.

“We have three or four soldiers aimlessly walking and standing around, but what can they do? The stuff that gets stolen here is not carried out through a hole in the fence. If only it was, soldiers standing guard at the hole could have worked.

“The property that is stolen is driven out with all the correct documentation ... The real damage is not from a guy stuffing a length of copper wire in his pants. We are talking about diesel, spare parts and other equipment exiting through the main gate. This would not be possible if the vultures did not have someone on the inside,” he said.

“They can bring 1,000 troops and nothing will change. The active syndicates have people in management, people at the gate and people in the workforce. These syndicates need to be identified and arrested from top to bottom.”

The man also flagged the quality of maintenance at the station.

“We have a boiler that was stripped last week as part of planned maintenance. By the weekend it was giving problems again.” Spare parts are another concern.

“If you walk into our spare parts room, the things you will see are the results of a broken tender process. Items that are the wrong specifications and cannot be used, yet the supplier was paid in full.”

Buying spare parts is a procurement nightmare, the insider said.

“At this very moment, a lot of lights are off in the power station. In large parts of the building if you want to get around you have to use your phone’s flashlight to see. These guys have to generate power for the nation but they cannot even keep their own lights on.”

Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said they could not comment on the activities of soldiers deployed to power stations.

Regarding criminality and sabotage, Mantshantsha said: “Whenever Eskom has evidence of such actions, it has reported them to the relevant law enforcement agencies and to the public via media engagements.”

National police spokesperson Brig Athlenda Mathe said the efforts of the police’s multidisciplinary economic infrastructure teams — comprising different specialised units, private security, other government agencies and business partners — were starting to pay off.

“Through an integrated operational approach, 11,577 cases have been registered, with 4,393 arrests. Goods and property suspected to be proceeds of crime worth an estimated R33.6m have also been confiscated,” Mathe said.

“In relation to theft and vandalism in the energy sector, 2,418 cases are being investigated, with 196 suspects arrested.” She said 93 cases were now on the court roll and seven people had so far been convicted.

“The province with the most cases is Mpumalanga, which has 11 power stations. The police together with the Hawks are investigating 60 cases of tampering, theft and damage of essential infrastructure. The Free State was second, with 58 arrests, she said.

The SANDF did not respond to questions.