Bit of light in darkness of load-shedding
Pakati’s stance against Eskom’s tariff hike bid, plan to increase surveillance on freeways to fight crime are heartening
Eastern Cape and Buffalo City Metro residents have a bit of hope that their leadership is prepared to fight for them during this grim period of loadshedding and crime that is spiralling out of control.
This week the Daily Dispatch carried two stories that touched on governance and fighting back against the further milking of ratepayers.
They covered the three burning issues of electricity prices, crime and road carnage.
These social torments are plaguing the province, the city and citizens across the country.
We first published a story about BCM mayor Xola Pakati, who is also deputy chair of the SA Local Government Association, voicing his opposition to Eskom’s bid for a 32% tariff hike.
Eskom wants to implement it from April next year, a move that has many of the interest groups — from municipalities, business and ratepayers — howling that they are being cut to the bone.
For municipalities, a steep tariff hike is a double-edged sword.
They can just pass it onto residents and not worry. When residents don’t pay, they can just switch them off and even implement prepaid meters.
But on the flip side municipalities would go bankrupt if they weren’t able to to collect revenue from ratepayers.
This is evident in many of the poorer municipalities across the country.
So it was refreshing to see Pakati, and Salga as a whole, place the interests of the municipality and its ratepayers at the forefront.
Pakati argued that other municipalities, especially those which already owed Eskom, would collapse.
Another issue he flagged was the impact this would have on the economy of those municipalities, saying their debt would skyrocket, forcing Eskom to switch off entire towns.
“To increase by 32% would be stretching citizens too far, but also [Eskom] should look at methods of generating revenue other than increasing tariffs,” he said.
He argued that the situation was made worse by the unreliability of Eskom supply.
Pakati spoke to the paper on Monday, the same day that the SA Roads Agency SOC Ltd was presenting a report on the update of a project in the Eastern Cape, which included a plan to have surveillance on the freeways in the province’s cities.
It was at this event that Pakati’s frustrations about the unreliable Eskom supply emerged.
Just as Sanral head Mbulelo Peterson was making his presentation on the plan to have surveillance on roads in the big cities, it went dark.
And almost everyone groaned “Eishkom ” , a now popular reaction when load-shedding hits while you are in a public space.
The plans by Sanral were positive news as they would bolster the work of the police and emergency responders.
If they were implemented well, it would mean less crime and a better way to pursue criminals, assuming they are caught on camera.
But the load-shedding bit left this reporter wondering: “What if load-shedding hits just as a getaway car from a robbery is about to go past a CCTV camera?”