Mr Speaker, can I request that the hon Meshoe provides me with what he considers to be exorbitant. This is because it is no good hiding behind adjectives without giving exact figures. I say this quite sincerely. There is a serious debate about what is an appropriate executive remuneration policy for senior executives in this country, both in the public and the private sector. We need to have that debate, but that debate is not helped by throwing slogans around in which you cannot justify the basis on which that was done.
When we talk about the performance of Eskom, let us bear in mind that it is this very same government that has apologised that it placed Eskom under undue stress by not allowing it to invest when it needed to invest in power. This resulted in the power shortages that we have experienced over the past time.
Let me also just say that, in this last year, Eskom received the following awards: the Golden Key Award for Public Body of the Year, awarded by the Human Rights Commission and the Open Democracy Advice Centre; the international DuPont Annual Safety Award; the Komosa Award, as an award for creating the greatest job opportunities; the Fossil Fuel Foundation Award; the Best Deal of 2009 Award by the Global Trade Review magazine; and the Most Ideal Employer in Engineering Award, which was a culmination of a student survey conducted at 23 South African universities, and more than 26 000 students took part and voted Eskom as the most ideal employer in the engineering field.
Let us stop harping on Eskom being this complete failure. Let us acknowledge where failure took place and where government caused the failure that actually chained Eskom's hands. Let us look at what has happened since 2008. What kind of rolling blackouts have there been? There have not been any. They have been managed under extremely difficult circumstances. In the two years ahead there will still be shortages in the provision of power. So, let us start engaging in this debate in a sensible way without just throwing out pejorative statements about their performance. [Applause.]