BCM power cuts condemned
BCMM’s high electricity bills and cut-offs have left many residents shocked and angry. Since the Easter holiday, residents, especially poor indigents, have been subjected to periodic electricity cut-offs.
Unemployed and under-employed young people whose parents are deceased are forced to pay huge outstanding municipal debts.
BCMM is sending a wrong message to its residents and its policies constitute serious contradictions. The indigent policy means that the municipality should subsidise those households who cannot afford to pay for municipal services and also provides them with 50 electrical units per month.
Currently, households that are in arrears and whose electricity has been blocked, actually pay 40% more when buying it.
The municipality’s policies of electricity cutoffs means that those who connect electricity illegally are safe while those who continue to buy it are victimised.
With rising unemployment and household expenses, more and more people who are unable to pay for water and electricity services, have resorted to illegal connections. The councillors, party cadres and the municipality itself know about illegal connections – they could do nothing about it.
Poor black residents were not supposed to illegally connect or steal electricity in the first place. Comrade Mandela’s promise of a “‘better life” meant that those who are poor and have been victimised by colonialism and apartheid will receive a lifeline of free basic services, such as water and electricity.
This is why the indigent policy and 50kWh per month of free electricity was introduced in the very first place. However, now poor lawabiding residents are without electricity as a result of the BCMM’s neoliberal capitalist policies that are premised on making profits at the expense of basic needs.
This raises the question: where does power lie? Does it lie with the mayor and his officials or with the councillors?
At the national political level we ask the same question – does power lie with the president and his cabinet or does it lie with parliament? The councillors who are voted for by poor people know their mandate very well and they know the misery our people is exposed to in the townships. Even worse, the BCMM is led by the ANC, which has labelled itself as a pro-poor and pro-working class party. The ANC’s radical economic transformation policy, if it’s real, should start with providing free basic social services to the poor. — Anele Mbi, Braelyn Ext 10 Busisiwe Mkhwebane should collect and gather her information about the Absa and Bankorp by soliciting advice from Financial Services Board (FSB) or from former finance minister, Trevor Manuel, and former Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni.
[She should have] asked them how the government functions in relation to the banking system in South Africa because the government doesn’t interfere in the bank management system and Michael Oatley who promised to recover it, couldn’t do that.
The constitutional mandate of advocate Mkhwebane is to investigate improper conduct by the officials of state administration and report that conduct to authorities.
The banking system or Act stipulates that the banks are independent, so that no one can manipulate the currency in his or her favour, including that of government. Oatley’s CIEX couldn’t deliver because there was no such, instead he raised hopes to others.
Now a public protector based on empty findings takes decision against Absa. I can’t understand the public protector’s logic and I think she was ill-advised in this case and one doesn’t need to be an accountant or a legal expert to arrive at her illogical conclusion. So she must not create the impression to BLF that the money owed by Absa, if there is any, will be recovered. That is a fallacy of misleading the nation and the Mngxitamas because the intelligence officer Michael lied. — Thozamile Lunguza, East London