The government’s plan to establish a seventh regional electricity distributor (RED) to take care of the power-supply distribution for all non-metro municipalities may end up “fixing” non-existent problems, says the official opposition Democratic Alliance.
DA power spokesperson Hendrik Schmidt said: “It is not an assured fact that a seventh RED would be any more viable than the current system of distribution.”
Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin’ statement that local government was “useless” at distributing electricity supply was “just yet another indicator” of the African National Congress government’s aloofness and failure to identify the problems on the ground, Schmidt said on Monday.
Schmidt was responding to a news report earlier on Monday.
“While it is true that under Eskom, distribution to smaller, more rural municipalities has often been inconsistent and subject to many complicated tariff provisions, it is inaccurate to denounce all of local government as incompetent in this regard.
Schmidt said that firstly, as the minister himself acknowledged, the metropolitan municipalities are fully capable of handling the distribution of their own electricity supply.
Secondly, there are many examples of success stories of smaller municipalities, particularly the Western Cape, Gauteng and Mpumalanga, being able to distribute their electricity supply without any hiccups.
Thirdly, there are also many examples of municipalities in areas such as the Northern Cape and the Karoo, where mismanagement and capacity are not as big a problem as the obstacles to viability that come with electricity provision to huge and sparsely populated geographical expanses.
“The original idea was that the six metro-based REDs would supply both urban and outlying and rural areas. As such, urban areas would have been subsidising the distribution of electricity supply to rural areas.”
“Government’s backtracking from this original plan comes in the face of opposition from many of municipalities and from the South African Local Government Association (Salga).”
Instead of destructively painting all of local government with one brush, Erwin would have been well-advised to adopt the following course: “Continue with the implementation of the six metro-based REDs only, with Eskom continuing to supply directly to rural and outlying municipalities in the interim.”
Schmidt said subsidies and extra management capacity should be provided to rural and outlying municipalities to ensure that electricity tariffs and service levels are in line with more developed areas.
In addition, the six metro-based REDs should be allowed to gradually expand their activities to rural and outlying municipalities, “while keeping tariff subsidies in place”.
Then subsidies should be lifted gradually, “as infrastructure becomes more established, service delivery costs standardise across distribution areas and service levels stabilise,” he said. — I-Net Bridge