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Following a petition and weeks of lobbying by AfriForum, Tshwane’s proposed tariff increase for July 1 will no longer take effect and will only be implemented after a reasonable process to determine the rate of the increase is followed.
Afriforum announced that the tariff would remain unchanged until further notice in a statement issued on their website.
According to their statement, the Afrikaner lobby group requested in a letter from its legal team that Nersa does not approve the increase because the planned increase would boil down to a tariff that is higher than the proposed 13.8% for municipalities.
AfriForum’s district coordinator for Greater Pretoria, Jaco Grobbelaar, who attended Nersa’s meeting on Friday, said: “Nersa sharply criticised the Tshwane Metro and said that the council must get its house in order and also indicated that AfriForum’s proposals regarding a public participation process will be considered.”
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The Tshwane Metro this past month announced three different electricity tariff increases for the 2019/2020 term. These tariff increases include an electricity increase of 12% with the three basic tariff charges of respectively R56, R120, and R200 that are payable before any electricity is consumed.
The basic tariff means that electricity consumers will need to pay this tariff before any electricity is even consumed.
For prepaid electricity consumers, this means that if you purchase electricity to the value of R56, R120 or R200, you will receive no units for the electricity purchased and will need to purchase additional electricity before receiving any units at all.
Nersa’s guidelines for electricity increases recommend a proposed increase of 13.8% for municipalities to ensure that these increases do not become excessive. The problem with the basic tariff charges, as proposed by the Metro, is however that the percentage increase for electricity consumers will be considerably more than the proposed 13.8%.
“AfriForum believes the Tshwane Metro has found a way via a devious manner to have consumers pay much more than the allowed 13.8%. The charges of R200 and R120 are sharp increases compared to the proposed R56 and seem to be unreasonable and cannot be justified,” said Grobbelaar.
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(Compiled by Kaunda Selisho)
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