City of Johannesburg mayor, Kabelo Gwamanda confidently says R200 electricity increase for prepaid users is here to stay. Picture: Itumeleng English / African News Agency (ANA)
Build One South Africa (Bosa) has slammed the R200 surcharge for prepaid users in Johannesburg which came into effect last Monday.
Ayanda Allie, a Bosa member of the legislature in Gauteng, said the surcharge was “daylight robbery” which would impact negatively on cash strapped residents, more so the poor and unemployed.
“We are living in extremely difficult economic conditions; customers should not be punished for the failure of the state to protect infrastructure. We condemn this daylight robbery in the strongest possible terms. Many prepaid electricity users deliberately opted out of the post-paid method, to avoid theft of the City of Joburg during the billing crisis. Now we are being punished for it,” said Allie.
However, mayor Kabelo Gwamanda told eNCA on Sunday that the tariff hikes were here to stay, an meant to revitalise the metro’s infrastructure, in particular, electricity infrastructure.
“It is part of our funding model that contributes a certain percentage to the R83 billion for the 2023/24 budget. This is a legislated fee that has to be paid by all metros. Tshwane, Cape Town and Ekurhuleni have been doing it for years as a funding model for metros. As the City of Johannesburg, we needed to introduce it. It is here to stay,” said Gwamanda.
Earlier this year, member of the mayoral committee for finance Dada Morero, announced that electricity tariffs were set to increase by 12.7%, and water tariffs by 7.7% during his budget speech for the city.
Morero highlighted that the CoJ had the lowest tariff increase out of all metros for the 2024/25 financial year.
“City of Johannesburg has the lowest property rates tariff increases for 2024/25 financial year. In the 2024/25 financial year, our initial proposal for the property rates increase was 4.8% based on the CPI assumptions used in the budget. Despite that initial proposal of 4.8% being the lowest amongst all metros, in the final budget, we proposed a further 1% reduction to a tariff increase of 3.8%. For electricity increase, the tariff increase is 12.7%. Our water is 7.7% increase,” said Morero.
In spite of the notion that the metro’s revenue and infrastructure development was mostly through tariff increases, Allie said it was the city’s responsibility to ensure economic growth instead of burdening residents.
“The city must conduct consequence management without punishing residents for crimes we did not commit,” said Allie.
The Star
hope.mafu@inl.co.za