The Public Investment Corporation (PIC) has no right to treat the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) as its own piggy bank and use it to save the ANC government’s near-bankrupt institutions, like Eskom, says Adv Anton Alberts, chairperson of the FF Plus.
Adv Alberts says that the FF Plus is strongly opposed to the month-long loan of R5 billion, in the form of a bridging facility, that the PIC awarded to Eskom in order to finance the company’s operations.
By the end of February, Eskom also needs a further R10 billion to repay its loans from banks.
He adds that it is disturbing that money from government employees’ pensions is being used to help a state-owned entity, which has been driven to the edge of total bankruptcy by mismanagement and corruption, with its cash-flow problems.
“That money does not belong to the trustees or to the PIC, it belongs to the government employees that paid their pension fund contributions.
“The public servants’ message to the PIC must be loud and clear: they will not allow the PIC do deal recklessly with their money and loans to failed state-owned entities are simply not acceptable.
“The FF Plus will monitor the situation to see if the money gets repaid as per agreement. Should something go amiss, the party will make sure that the trustees are prosecuted and that the money is recovered,” says adv Alberts.
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