Needy to get phone subsidies

http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/telecoms/2006/0603151050.asp?S=Legal View&A=LEG&O=S

The Universal Service Agency, which manages the USF, confirmed a study seeking to define “needy persons” for the purposes of the Telecommunications Act has been finalised.

Thapatlaase says the study will be presented to the agency board next week, and the agency will make recommendations to communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri.

Matsepe-Casaburri will in turn make determinations, published in the government gazette, on categories of needy persons to whom assistance may be given and the manner of giving out those subsidies, he says.

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oh dear, are the poor unable/unwilling to start getting into debt and climbing the capitalist ladder of debt slavery?
Awwww.
Let's help them out and make it easier for them to spend money and have to start paying for phone rentals and getting into the habit of using Telkom's services and beginning to rely on it, so that they too can get hooked into the whole concept.

Looks like Telkom and its political managers are working ahead to offset the coming exodus from Telkom towards the SNO by those with money - in the guise of 'helping the needy', of course. As the wealthy disappear from Telkom, the so-called 'needy' get suckered into being provided with cut price phones and a monthly debt.

And the profit keeps pouring in, to the State and Telkom.

Oh boy - I give up...

Why is it so difficult to realise that by focusing on making telecommunication reasonable priced for every Saffa will also benefit 'the poor'

making telecommunications 'reasonably priced' - is not the same thing at all, as 'giving assistance' and 'subsidies' to the poor - to allegedly 'help' them get 'telephones' and 'internet'. Given that people are starving, homeless, living in dirty, overcrowded conditions, low wages etc etc - talking about offering 'subsidies' to help these folks end up with a monthly phone bill, is bizarre.

If they dropped the prices of telecoms for all, then you're talking about a real help for all - otherwise it seems like bait to hook the poor into getting signed up to Telkom..

Interesting, so now that the Universal Service Agency has been shown up just recently for doing bugger all with all the cash that they get (besides maybe buying a fleet or 2 of luxury vehicles) they now all of a sudden decide to get off their arses and commision a 'study'.
Hooraaaa