It is a shame that the public must once again bear the burden of Eskom's tariff hike of 9,4% to make up for the mismanagement at the power supplier.
It has now also been admitted that the extremely expensive power plants, Medupi and Kusile, are dysfunctional due to poor planning and construction – something that corruption certainly contributed to greatly.
Eskom will have to take action and the service providers that erected the power stations must be held accountable for the money that was squandered. Tax payers cannot be expected to foot this bill as well.
It is unacceptable for consumers to be milked dry through tariff hikes due to the mismanagement, incompetence and corruption that characterise everything that the ANC is involved in. Over the last year, South Africa's economic growth rate was a mere 0,8%. Today's electricity tariff hike must be measured against that.
In the meantime, Eskom must take urgent action to ensure that defaulters pay their outstanding debt – specifically places like Soweto. The service providers who were awarded contracts based on Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) must be held accountable for their poor service delivery. The money paid to such service providers must be recovered.
This does not change the fact that Eskom should be privatised and that healthy competition must be allowed to enter the electricity generating market.
Until that happens, unreasonable tariff hikes will result in consumers using less and less Eskom power and devising plans to become increasingly self-sufficient. The writing is on the wall for Eskom
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