Councils want monopoly over electricity delivery in South Africa

[Bradley Prior]

Councils want monopoly over electricity delivery in South Africa

The South African Local Government Association (Salga) has submitted an application to the Pretoria High Court for a declaratory order that would give South African municipalities exclusive rights to administer, distribute and sell electricity throughout South Africa.

 

[3WA]

Okay but give us something in return: maybe any South African can kick Xolile George in the nuts as hard as they want, whenever they want.

 

[Ragnarök]

Ok , and if they don't pay or do maintenance , can we have a law to hang them in the town squire

 

[RedViking]

Of course they want to. Corrupt.

 

[_TrXtR_]

So rather than having the problem controlled in one place we can have it out of control in many places.
I love the stupidity. It fits with our country narrative.

 

[upup]

This was a real plan 1994, muni would take over the local power network, pay eskom for the infrastructure, and with that money eskom would buy new powerstations etc, but then came politics and greed.

 

[ToxicBunny]

Whilst personally this move by SALGA makes my blood boil because its so obviously an attempt to try and bolster the coffers of the municipalities that have been gutted by corruption and now they need new revenue streams to gut, I am very interested to see how this plays out in court to be honest.

Surely the Comp Comm would have to have a say in this because it would effectively be swapping one "monopoly" for many regional "monopolies" and those regional entities have shown zero ability to actually do any job satisfactorily.

Being somewhat objective about it, there is a significant chance (in my opinion) that this court case could absolutely go completely south for SALGA in relation to the provisioning of municipal services and could even further gut the ability of muni's to generate revenue.

 

[Kawak]

The NCC/NGO consumer body needs to be called in, consumers must have a say when an entity is fighting for monopolizing a market. WTF?

 

[Gazg]

They have cottoned on that it is a big source of revenue for them.

 

[now05ster]

Ok , and if they don't pay or do maintenance , can we have a law to hang them in the town squire

No, Squire, I don't think that will happen.

 

[Neptuner]

 

[Gazg]

This was a real plan 1994, muni would take over the local power network, pay eskom for the infrastructure, and with that money eskom would buy new powerstations etc, but then came politics and greed.

Correct........it was actually a concept named REDS......Restructure of Electricity Distribution. There was a lot of talk, but that was about it. I think the stumbling blocks amongst other things were compensation for assets and loss of revenue for Eskom.

 

[Iwojima]

Not gonna happen. Not with rampant electricity theft at a munic level and munics owing Eskom billions.

This is simply an attempt from corrupt and/or useless munic politicians to secure additional revenue without cleaning up their mess.

 

[Polymathic]

Local government Cadres vs Eskom Cadres


It's a cadre civil war

 

[supersunbird]

When the residents can have SLAs with penalties on the electricity provision by the municipalities, then sure, they can get this.

 

[flytek]

Our local municipality that is well run still makes half its money from raping the local residents who have no other way to get electricity besides going off grid.
And if they go off grid they will still be charged R500 a month for the fact that there is the possibility that they can have electricity.
This applies to homes or vacant plots...
So yes SALGA wants their members to have the monopoly on electricity supply so they can rape their local residents monthly...simple

 

[Fuzzbox]

Who are they going to buy the electricity from when Eskom wont supply because they haven't paid.

 

[Fuzzbox]

They have cottoned on that it is a big source of revenue for them.

How so

 

[system32]

Ok , and if they don't pay or do maintenance , can we have a law to hang them in the town squire

There a law that Eskom can use with these errand metros / municipalities - it's called PREPAID
Put the main Eskom feed to the metro / municipality on PREPAID.
This is how prepaid works:

1. Pay Eskom upfront for your MWh of electricity.
2. Update your meter with the MWh activation code.
3. When the MWh runs low, top up or be cut off.

PREPAID - it works for regular users, just apply the same principle to at the metro / municipality level.

 

[JustSomeGuy21]

This was a real plan 1994, muni would take over the local power network, pay eskom for the infrastructure, and with that money eskom would buy new powerstations etc, but then came politics and greed.

Then came Gwede