Consumer cost escalations of more than a 100% in the next few years is a main feature of Eskom’s latest application to NERSA
With the ever soaring of food price, the yo-yoing of the petrol price and possible e-tolling, the poor and working class will bear the brunt of Eskom’s proposed new electricity tariff structure.
The National Consumer Forum has branded Eskom a parasitic institution for wanting to increase the electricity by 16% and suggested that electricity be tax free like brown bread and milk. Imraan Ismail Mookadam, the forums Western Cape coordinator presented his submission to Nersa and stated his reasons why Eskom’s application for the hike should be denied.
Speaking to Radio Islam’s Moulana Sulaimaan Ravat, Mookadam said their biggest argument to Nersa was the ‘sinful’ cost of high electricity prices was just unbearable and that South Africa could not survive another round of unrealistic and unaffordable increases.
He said South Africa as a nation cannot develop with such high costs and its reflected in the low growth, the unemployment, the high cost of food and living and the high levels of debt consumers are finding themselves in. “It’s become unaffordable to survive in South Africa, and another round of increases would just be a knockout,” said Mookadam.
Responding to a claim from Eskom that if consumers don’t bare the increase where would he additional funding be sought, Mookadam said that the funding should be from the central fiscus and should be an investment that could be easier recouped through taxes than through tariffs. “We also saying that the money is there, but it’s being drawn into the central fiscus through value added tax (Vat),but it’s not being reinvested into Eskom’s core function,” added Mookadam.
Mookadam said, “The Nersa hearings (conducted in Port Elizabeth on 16Th January 2012) are also a bit of a farce because they don’t really listen to us in any case. We saying that Nersa itself is unrepresentative because the people appointed to Nersa is appointed by the minister. And the minister has a vested interest because the state is collecting so much revenue from energy and electricity that the real decision making is undemocratic because there is a vested interest.”
South Africa is already one of the world’s biggest emitters of Greenhouse gasses and ranks number one in Africa. We have to answer to the world for our debt to present and future generations.
Yet, as we prepare to celebrate 20 years of democracy, Eskom’s short-term profit-driven strategies have still not delivered power to millions of South Africans, while thousands of households can simply no longer afford the steep tariffs, given a tripling of tariffs in the past ten years. Food security and jobs are now being threatened while people are being pushed to the limits of survival.
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