nuclear-news

Financial meltdown looming for South Africa’s state-owned nu­clear com­pany, Necsa

Nuclear body faces financial meltdown Pelind­aba brass scram­ble to pay sci­en­tists   JAN-JAN JOU­BERT jou­bertj@sun­day­times.co.za

SOUTH Africa’s be­lea­guered state-owned nu­clear com­pany, Necsa, has for the first time ad­mit­ted to fi­nan­cial strain, but vows to keep pay­ing staff salaries on time de­spite “the ac­tual cash in­flow not be­ing re­alised as per plan”.

Ac­cord­ing to leaked in­ter­nal doc­u­men­ta­tion, Necsa will not be able to pay its al­most 2 000 staff this month un­less Fi­nance Min­is­ter Nh­lanhla Nene’s cash­strapped Na­tional Trea­sury can find an ex­tra R212-mil­lion by March 31……..

Ac­cord­ing to the leaked doc­u­ments, Necsa has failed to pay sup­pli­ers since Novem­ber, de­spite Pres­i­dent Ja­cob Zuma’s pol­icy di­rec­tive that the state pay all its sup­pli­ers within 30 days of ser­vices ren­dered.

The doc­u­ments also claim Necsa is un­able to pay its au­tho­ri­sa­tion fees to the Na­tional Nu­clear Reg­u­la­tor, plac­ing the ac­cred­i­ta­tion of its nu­clear sci­en­tists at risk, and rais­ing the spec­tre of a skills ex­o­dus on the eve of the planned nu­clear build pro­gramme.

The cur­rent ex­pec­ta­tion is that Rus­sia will build new nu- clear re­ac­tors, and that Necsa staff’s skills could con­trib­ute to man­u­fac­tur­ing the fuel.

If not, fuel will have to be con­tin­u­ally im­ported at great cost from other ma­jor pro­duc­ers such as Rus­sia, rais­ing the con­sumer price of elec­tric­ity even fur­ther………

DA MP and en­ergy spokesman Gor­don Mackay lamented Necsa’s and the reg­u­la­tor’s anger, call­ing for trans­parency in­stead.

“While cor­rup­tion can be dealt with swiftly by re­mov­ing those con­cerned, the long-term cost of mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion is worse as highly skilled scarce staff quit Necsa for greener in­ter­na­tional pas­tures,” he said…….

The DA will raise ur­gent ques­tions in par­lia­ment to clar­ify how Necsa came to find it­self in such a po­si­tion and what can be done to save the sit­u­a­tion…….. ttp://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/sunday-times/20150308/281556584293429/TextView

March 11, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, South Africa