South Africans will not pay for a 32.7% tariff increase to be kept in the dark by Eskom

18 July 2022

Eskom’s latest tariff application for a 32.7% increase in the price of electricity is immoral and an insult to South Africans who have endured possibly the worst loadshedding schedule so far this year.

The DA will submit its objections to this proposed Eskom rip-off once NERSA opens public comments on the 1st of August.

South Africans are already struggling to stay above water due to rising costs of living and a high inflationary environment. For Eskom to add an additional high electricity tariff increase for a service that they cannot provide is simply unacceptable.

Consumers cannot be expected to subsidise Eskom’s unviable business model and the ANC's decades-long failure to open up the energy market to independent power producers.

Instead of liberaliasing the energy market and allowing IPPs to bring new energy generation capacity online, Gwede Mantashe is busy wasting time on a fantasy about a "new Eskom entity to compete with Eskom".

The DA also notes and rejects Eskom's new power tariffs proposal that could mean households will have to pay more money for using less electricity. Households that have lower than the average electricity consumption in South Africa and solar users will pay hundreds of rands more every month.

It is time South African consumers are put first and that government - and Eskom - abandon their maneuvers where the consumer keeps on footing the bill for their failures.

NERSA should reject Eskom’s exorbitant tariff application because its first obligation is towards consumers - not Eskom.

Issued by Kevin Mileham, DA Shadow Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, 18 July 2022