Ah, yes, at last! When Martin Creamer agreed to publish this column, he requested that I avoid politics. And so I shall. This letter is addressed to all of you politicians, far left to far right. Suits to overalls. Women and men, and others.

Dear politicians

I am a registered professional engineer. I have been registered for 36 years and qualified for 42 years. I have designed power system and have been a senior operations engineer for State-owned electricity utility Eskom. I know stuff, bru. So, listen.

Eskom’s problems are a mountain of debt, sabotage by unhappy persons who supply coal by road, corruption and too many staff. Eskom has two power stations that were supposed to add 9 500 MW to the grid. These projects started late, since, in 2008, a past President would not agree to building them. They were fast-tracked and the politicians and politically appointed Eskom staff looted the budgets. The designs are wrong. This is partly why Eskom has a debt mountain – the rest is the too many staff, appointed by politically appointed Eskom staff.

Eskom’s tariffs are not enough to pay off the debt. The debt would be paid if Eskom was granted the 18% tariff increase it seeks, but the National Energy Regulator of South Africa says “No”.

The politicians force Eskom to buy all the power generated by independent power producers (IPPs), which Eskom would rather not do, as it makes the utility’s system operationally inefficient. Eskom loses up to R6-million a day, since it has to run its gas turbines when wind power turbines run out of wind when a front passes.

The ongoing sabotage at the power stations is hard to prove and hard to eliminate. One can see that something is wrong from the poor load factors of many of the generating units. The unhappy persons who supply coal by road do not like Eskom getting coal by rail or by overland conveyer – this cuts them out. For years, the road suppliers have been corrupt, underdelivering and being overpaid. This has stopped. They are unhappy. They react.

Politicians appointed staff to senior positions in many of the municipalities. They have no experience and mess up the municipal finances and use the money due to Eskom to pay salaries. This adds to the mountain of debt.

Eskom has way too many staff but the unions have political clout and will not allow them to be retrenched.

Eskom will not go down. If politicians (who created all the problems) fix the management at municipal level, let the utility have the 18% increase and allow it to retrench, then it will recover.

Suggesting that IPPs can take over power generation from Eskom is a joke. Wind power availability is only 25% of the time. Solar power does not work at night. The only reason we have IPPs is that Eskom is forced to buy from them. Anybody who thinks IPPs can take over from Eskom is misinformed.

A reoccurring theme is the age of Eskom power stations. Yes, many of them are over 30 years old. But power stations are not like vacuum cleaners; with maintenance, their life is infinite.

There is the cry: Let people generate power and sell it to the grid. Hello! Hello! This is already allowed.

There is the cry: Allow people to generate more than 1 MW into the grid. Hello! Some sawmills and sugar mills generate much more than this.

Some politicians want South Africa to build more nuclear power stations. A good idea, actually, but unrealistic at this time.

I have a suggestion for all of you politicians: Each of your parties should employ at least one qualified engineer in your line-up – somebody who will assist you in not spouting ideological rubbish when talking about power systems and power generation. There is not one single engineer in government at Ministerial level. Dear politicians, try harder, get at least one engineer – it is not difficult.