The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) welcomes the ruling by the London Judge that dismissed the bid by Michael Lomas to block South African authorities from extraditing him to face a corruption case in South Africa.
He is facing a corruption case that cost Eskom R745 million in the building of the Kusile Power Station. Contracts that eventually cost Eskom an estimated R1,4 billion were awarded to Tubular Construction Projects through bribes and kickbacks. In this case, Lomas will join the former Eskom bosses France Hlakudi and Abram Masango, and the businessmen, Antonio Jose Trindade and Hudson Kgomoeswana.
SAFTU is pleased that powerful individuals in both Eskom and the private sector are facing the law and will account for their part in the graft that created huge cost overruns for Eskom and exposed the entity to over R300 billion in unnecessary debt. The initial budgets for the building of Medupi and Kusile were R79 billion and R81 billion respectively (R160 billion combined), however, by 2020, Eskom had incurred R500 billion debt with unfinished power plants.
The delay of Medupi and Kusile completion not only cost the country financially through corruption and money-laundering but cost this country by exacerbating loadshedding. The higher stages of loadshedding could have been averted, had the stations been completed and commissioned on time, and perhaps this could have assisted in defeating loadshedding much earlier.
Though pleased with this extradition, SAFTU demands that the case should be sped so that these perpetrators are made to pay back the money and imprisoned. Paying back money should no longer be a substitute for direct imprisonment. Corrupt business people and their counterparts in government should suffer both fates: *paying back the money and imprisonment.
