The Black Business Council says unless government removes “incompetent” people at Eskom, the country must forget about its recovery path from slow economic growth caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

On Wednesday morning, Eskom confirmed that the striking workers have returned to work following the introduction of a new wage offer in the negotiation process.

The strike at Eskom by National Unon of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) caused serious disruptions at the power plants forcing the power utility to introduce stage 6 loadshedding from Tuesday.

Black Business Council CEO Kganki Matabane said the security of energy supply is the biggest risk to the government’s economic reconstruction and recovery plan introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Matabane said the continuous load-shedding, was totally unacceptable.

“Until and unless our government, as shareholders, takes the drastic steps to remove the incompetent management and inadequate board of Eskom, who have time to come with laughable excuses such as continuously blaming state capture instead of solving the electricity generation challenges, the country must forget about any prospect of economic recovery,” Matabane said.

He added that the SA has become a laughing stock of the world, a “failing state” due to lack of political will to hold those who are paid to provide reliable electricity to account.

“We call upon H.E. President Ramaphosa to do the right thing if he does not want to be remembered as the President who brought our economy to its knees,” he said.

Workers at different Eskom plants went on strike demanding between 8% and 12% wage increases while the power utility was willing to increase salaries by 4%, 4.5% and 5.3% in a staggered system. A new offer to be discussed in the central bargaining forum was introduced during negotiations on Wednesday and the unions asked workers to return to work.

Loadshedding has been introduced several times this year due to problems at power stations. The business community has been raising concerns about load-shedding arguing that its introduction will cancel government’s efforts of creating jobs.

Business Unity SA CEO urged government to intervene in the problems that Eskom is facing and speedily remove barriers to private power producers to ease pressure on the grid.