COSATU statement on electricity hikes Our public services are not for sale!
April 2012 will be a dark month for consumers. Electricity tariffs are going up by a minimum of 16% on 1 April. In the same month, the price of petrol is to rise by 71 cents a litre on 4 April in Gauteng and by 66 cents a litre at the coast, Metrorail fares are set to rise by well over the rate of inflation, and then on 30 April motorists are expected to pay at least 30c a kilometre to drive on Gauteng’s highways. This is the price we are paying for the policy of commodifying our basic public services, turning them into opportunities for business to make big profits or running public enterprises as if they are private ventures based on profit maximization principles. The inaffordabilty of basic services lies at the centre of many community protests, and it reflects the two-tier level of services in so many areas. In education, healthcare, public transport, provision of water, sanitation and electricity, there are good but expensive services for the rich minority and terrible or non-existent services for the poor majority. This reflects the levels of economic apartheid and inequality in income and wealth ownership which pervade every corner of our most unequal society on earth. This electricity hike is just the latest in three years of increases. Even with the lower rate hike of only 16%, however, it will still add up to a total increase of at least 81.8% over those three years, to which the 6 largest Metropolitan Councils can and will add anything between 14% and 110% above the Eskom rates, which will push up the three-year increase to well over 100%. Despite progress in the provision of electricity infrastructure, a significant part of the population, 25 % of households are still without electricity at all and 53% of these use firewood for cooking. Significantly even 25% of those with access to electricity use firewood for cooking, due to the cost. The cost-recovery system, typified by the use of pre-paid meters, leads households to continue using coal and firewood for cooking and heating (with their pollution consequences), because heaters and stoves consume a lot of electricity. Indeed protests are reported to be higher in winter than in summer! The 15-Year Review of the Presidency itself admits this problem with electricity when it says: “Problems of quality and affordability of services reduce the impact of broader access. For example, women in households which can afford to use electricity only for lighting, and not for heating or cooking, do not reap the full improvement that electrification can bring to their lives”. While Eskom is still owned by the state, since the late 1990s it has been corporatized and operates along commercial lines based on maximising profits. The concept of pre-paid meters was introduced to enforce payment by poor consumers, and now the measures meant for cross-subsidisation of low income domestic customers, like the inclining block rate tariffs, cannot be applied on the households with prepaid electricity meters. Overall, according to StatsSA’s 2010 General Household Survey, 2.3% of all households with electricity from the mains had their electricity cut off in the month before the survey because of non-payment. The cut-offs affected 250 000 households, or around 1 million people. These figures exclude people who could not pay pre-paid; they only count those who were cut off by the provider for non-payment. As might be expected, the poorest households, the least organised, worst resourced and most marginalised, who tend to vote for the ANC, bear a disproportionate burden from these cut-offs. 3,1% of the poorest 30% of households were cut off in the month before the survey for non-payment; the figure decreases steadily in the richest 10%, where only 0,8% had been cut off for non-payment. Obviously, the figures by race would show higher shut offs for Africans because they are more likely to be poor and live in rural and informal areas than other groups. COSATU has over and over again acknowledged and celebrated the tremendous strides made by the ANC government, particularly in the provision of basic services, houses, schools etc to poor communities. But the federation has also over and over again warned that the current rates of unemployment, poverty and inequalities, and the unequal levels of service delivery, in particular as they affect women and youth, are a ticking time bomb. Patrick Craven (National Spokesperson) Congress of South African Trade Unions P.O.Box 1019 Johannesburg South Africa Tel: +27 11 339-4911/24 Fax: +27 11 339-5080 / 6940 Mobile: +27 82 821 7456 E-Mail: [email protected] Sent from my iPad -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
