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LOCAL organisations have praised the National Energy Regulator (Nersa) for rejecting Eskom’s proposed 25,3% energy hike, saying they have averted a “pending crisis” for South African households, businesses and the economy.
Director of the Pietermaritzburg Agency for Community Social Action (Pacsa) Mervyn Abrahams said he was pleasantly surprised by Nersa’s decision to reject the tariff hike.
Speaking on behalf of Pacsa, which was instrumental in orchestrating a march against the Nersa hike in the city last week, Abrahams said in rejecting the proposal, Nersa has averted a “pending crisis” as households and the economy simply could not have absorbed another increase.
“We see the rejection by Nersa as a victory for all our organisations and people who have convinced Nersa that the current electricity tariffs have already breached their affordability threshold,” Abrahams said. “Should Eskom have succeeded, they would have forced hundreds of thousands of people to disconnect from the grid or to tamper with connections”.
Abrahams said they now call on Eskom to explore new means of efficient and affordable electricity generation.
“Eskom has now got to go back to the drawing board and find other ways of sourcing funding and generating affordability electricity,” Abrahams said.
“We would like to thank all those in Pietermaritzburg who took part in the protest action. It is an indication that if people stand together, we can change the country.”
CEO of the Pietermaritzburg Chamber of Business Melanie Veness welcomed the decision not to grant Eskom the increase.
“With the current growth rate in the economy businesses would not have been able to absorb the added increase. It was a sensible decision and we are grateful to Nersa. We will continue to progress with our plans to mitigate against load shedding in Pietermaritzburg where businesses embark on voluntary energy reduction as opposed to a total cutoff. We met with the municipality last week and will have a meeting with our stakeholders this Friday.”
Veness said the PCB-driven voluntary energy reduction programme was necessary as load shedding added a cost to business “excessive of downtime”. “We have one member who has lost equipment valued at about R1 million within the last four months due to load shedding. We have also lost the position of being the gateway to Africa. We are now competing directly with the continent. We need to change our country’s business ‘package of goods’.
“Previously we were known for having cheap energy while our labour costs were high and productivity not has good as many other countries. This is no longer the case. Changing our package equation is a necessity to attract investment,” said Veness
