Western Cape premier Alan Winde says Eskom’s proposed hefty tariff hikes would take food off our tables should they be accepted by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa).Winde said the province was devising plans to reduce its reliance on Eskom.
Winde and mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis joined a crowd that picketed on Monday outside the Cresta Grande hotel in Cape Town, where the energy regulator is holding public hearings into the requested price hikes. Eskom is seeking a 44% electricity price hike for municipalities and a 36% hike for direct customers.
In the City of Cape Town, we are working very hard to make sure that we reduce the reliance on Eskom and we get more and more independent power, and we’re doing exactly the same thing across the whole of the Western Cape, said Winde.
When you put up power costs more than inflation, you take food off our tables. When you increase eight times more than the inflation rate of electricity prices next year, you will make us poor — and our citizens already know that food is costing too much at the moment. We know that it is becoming harder and harder to make ends meet, and we cannot afford this kind of electricity increase.
Load-shedding has caused job losses and that has to be rectified. We cannot afford to give them increases because that rewards their bad management.”
Hill-Lewis said Nersa and Eskom were “bleeding our country dry and I want to say if they are listening, I’m sure they are enjoying their coffee, hear this loud and clear. We have to reduce our dependence on Eskom as quickly as we can. We are trying to buy power from other sources. We have to cut our ties.
Blue Downs resident Akhona Nofemela said the proposed tariff increase would impoverish him. Every month we spend at least over R500 for the people in the household, and compared to what we had 10 years ago, we now spend R100 for about 40KWH units, whereas that R100 could get us 80KWH units in the past, said Nofemela.
Municipal rates and taxes are already high on their own, which excludes electricity. So to increase prices even further would be a way of driving us further into poverty. Ivy Juda from Mitchells Plain said: I spend maybe R1,000 a month already because every week I spend R250 for electricity and it’s too much for me because I am a woman who works alone. My husband is a pensioner and I can’t afford that. It’s a lot for us.
