Is Joburg giving electricity users a break or just playing politics?
Prepaid electricity is, by design, a pay-as-you-use model. Adding a monthly fixed fee defeats its purpose. Should residents really be penalised with a R200 surcharge just for access, especially when conventional meter users are charged differently, asks the writer.
The City of Johannesburg's recently released draft budget for 2025/26 claims to bring stability and relief for electricity users. But the numbers and narratives don't add up beneath the surface, and residents have every right to be sceptical.
At the centre of the confusion is the controversial prepaid surcharge. Officially introduced last year amid public outcry, it deducted around R230 from residents' monthly recharges before they even saw a single unit of electricity. Many were blindsided. This year, the city says it won't increase this charge, but is that really good news?
The draft budget proposes 'unchanged' service charges: R70 for residential prepaid (High) users and a R200 network capacity charge. But here's the catch: the current network capacity charge is R130, not R200. This glaring discrepancy would mean a real increase if left uncorrected. Thankfully, City Power clarified that the total fixed charge remains R200, split between R70 and R130. Yet the fact that this error made it into the official draft raises questions about the competence or intentions behind the proposal.
Are these errors just sloppy accounting or deliberate obfuscation? How many residents would have noticed without public scrutiny?
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