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(Bloomberg) — South Africa’s state energy utility appointed an interim chief govt, two days after the early departure of its former boss and because the firm struggles to scale back file outages.

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Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. appointed Chief Monetary Officer Calib Cassim as interim CEO with speedy impact, it mentioned in an announcement on Friday. He’ll lead the corporate till additional discover, it mentioned.

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Cassim replaces Andre de Ruyter, who left on Wednesday after accusing state officers of theft and corruption that he mentioned is costing the debt-stricken utility 1 billion rand ($55 million) a month. South Africa is grappling with energy cuts of so long as 12 hours a day whereas Eskom struggles to handle frequent breakdowns of its getting old and poorly maintained coal-fired energy crops that produce nearly all the nation’s electrical energy.

Learn: Eskom CEO Quits a Month Early After Censuring South Africa’s ANC

Cassim was made interim CFO in 2017 and completely appointed to the position the next yr. He’s been at Eskom for 20 years and has a “deep understanding and appreciation of the Eskom enterprise and the electrical energy business, particularly relating to the challenges going through the financing of operations and future enlargement of the business,” the corporate mentioned.

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The appointment fails to handle criticism beforehand leveled at De Ruyter, who holds a legislation diploma, for not having an engineering background. Power Minister Gwede Mantashe mentioned in a July interview with the Johannesburg-based Mail & Guardian newspaper that technical expertise had been wanted for the job.

Cassim is a registered chartered accountant with a grasp’s diploma in enterprise management.

Eskom has applied energy cuts for 117 consecutive days due to plant outages, in response to knowledge compiled by Bloomberg. Whereas the corporate had mentioned Feb. 19 it anticipated to ease blackouts by the top of this week, as an alternative it’s intensified them, reducing an unprecedented 7,000 megawatts from the grid on Feb. 21 due to extra breakdowns at its producing fleet.

De Ruyter resigned in December and had been scheduled to go away the corporate on March 31. Eskom Chairman Mpho Makwana mentioned the previous CEO behaved “reprehensibly” when he made the accusations of theft and corruption. 

(Updates with remark by Eskom chairman in ultimate paragraph.)