Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has revealed that 10 million households qualify for Free Basic Electricity, but only 2 million currently have access to it due to several delays.
Ramakgopa added that government is working hard to ensure that poor households have access to free basic electricity.
The minister, who addressed the media on Monday during his weekly updates to the nation, added that poor households must be protected from load reduction and load shedding as government works towards ensuring affordable electricity supply.
His address comes just when other political parties have been critical of the high costs of electricity in the country.
“The last time I was on this podium, I made the point to say that we are doing everything possible to ensure that we are able to address a new phenomenon that is the issue of load reduction. That has to do with downstream capacity constraints as it relates to reticulation.
“I am going to show the numbers that we do not have a problem on the generation side but we are experiencing new problems on the reticulation side and municipalities are playing into that space. This is an area that requires our urgent attention,” he said.
The minister said his ministry has been speaking to the South African Local Government Authority (Salga) in a bid to protect the interests of consumers and municipalities as service providers.
“I made the point that Eskom is owed collectively about R78 billion by municipalities. In return municipalities are owed collective about R349 billion by various categories of customers both individual, households and business and government customers. So we require a solution that responds to all of those issues. But also, to ensure that when we experience the phenomenon of load reduction, we are able to minimise collateral damage to the extent that that is possible,” he added.
The minister added that obedient customers who pay for their bills on time and regularly should not be subjected to outages or cuts.
“There are people and customers who pay their monthly bills diligently and very religiously but they are also affected by the phenomenon of load reduction. It is important that we protect everyone. But we must also ensure that we protect the poor households and those who genuinely cannot afford to because of the economic constraints and a number of reasons and they do not have the means or ability to pay for their monthly accounts.
“It is important that we are able to protect those. We also know now the are fatal shortcomings with regards to free basic electricity. We know that there is at least about 10 million households in this country that qualify for free basic electricity. But what we know is that only 2 million are receiving this free basic electricity,” Ramokgopa said.
Meanwhile, the GOOD Party has blamed the DA for contributing to the high cost of electricity supply in the country. GOOD Party has urged the DA to use its requested debate on high electricity prices to explain to Cape Town residents why it implemented above Nersa-approved increases for both the 2021/22 and 2022/23 financial years.
This comes after the DA wrote to the Speaker of Parliament Thoko Didiza requesting an urgent parliamentary debate on the increasing costs of power as a matter of national importance.
“While GOOD supports the call for a debate, South Africans must not be fooled by the DA who is either unaware of what’s happening in their own municipalities or is deliberately trying to mislead the country.
“For the 2021/22 financial year, the Nersa-approved guideline increase was 7.47%, yet the City of Cape Town implemented a 9.6% hike. The next year saw Nersa approve 15.1%, while the City went ahead with a 17.6% increase.
“In both cases, the municipality’s application to apply for an increase above the Nersa guideline was dismissed, and the City continues to spend millions on legal costs fighting these illegal increases in court without any success,” the party said.
The Star
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