Sound engineer who ditched radio for charcoal

National Treasury’s office of the chief procurement officer took 111 days to respond to an urgent deviation request filed by Eskom to appoint a key contractor on the beleaguered Majuba Rail Project – potentially saddling the power utility with hundreds of millions of rands in extra costs. 

At the time of the application on 11 June 2020, it was estimated the project – to finish work on an extensive upgrade of the coal offloading facilities at Majuba Power Station near Volksrust, Mpumalanga that started in 2017 - could be completed in five months at a cost of R108 million. 

It took a little more than four months for Treasury to approve the deviation to appoint Tenova Mining and Minerals on a single source basis – after denying the request twice.