Psst! Heard the one about Eskom?
Spare a thought for the electricity supplier. Anyone with access to email in South Africa over the past few weeks has probably received at least a few of the slew of Eskom-related jokes doing the rounds. Like the cartoon about Eskom’s Grootste Treffers CD for 2008, including Candle in the Wind, Dancing in the Dark and Moonlight Serenade.
Another purports to show the Eskom call centre, staffed by a gang of monkeys.
But what happens if you actually work at Eskom?
Eskom’s information security manager, Krish Naidoo, sent an email under the heading “Abuse of Eskom email facilities” to the group communication department recently stating that “A number of ‘Eskom jokes’ are being distributed in the organisation. These jokes are defamatory, degrading, obscene and abusive.
“This is a request for Eskom employees that receive these ‘Eskom jokes’ to forward them to group communications and under no circumstances should these jokes be forwarded or circulated either within Eskom or outside Eskom.”
Andrew Etzinger, the general manager for demand-side management, told the Mail & Guardian Online on Wednesday that Eskom’s employees — whether they worked in a call centre of a power station — were under “considerable” stress at the moment.
“The working hours and working conditions are a lot more extreme than in the past,” he said. “When they leave the office, even then, family and friends are constantly bombarding them with Eskom-related issues. It’s not something you can leave at your desk 5pm.
“We are understandably the target of ridicule and abuse … this compounds the stress levels of our employees.”
Regarding the email about the monkeys in the call centre, Etzinger said it may be construed as extremely hurtful by some “less robust” employees.
Referring to having a sense of humour, he said that we’re not all “wired the same”, adding: “Humour would be a natural outlet in such a situation [load-shedding]; unfortunately, not all the emails are of clean and humorous nature.”
Etzinger said Eskom’s call centres are receiving between 30 000 and 50 000 calls a day and that 70% of the calls relate to load-shedding in municipal areas.
He said that because of the way the electricity grid is structured in South Africa, municipalities implement load-shedding in their own areas of supply. This means that Eskom doesn’t know when a particular municipal area is going to be without power.
Etzinger said Eskom’s staff had received messages “of a motivational nature” from the chief executive, thanking them for keeping their shoulders to the wheel.