Municipality’s ordeal

I WAS interested to note that Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown blames municipalities for some of Eskom’s financial woes.

She has a point. Some municipalities have been collecting revenue from the sale of electricity but using it for their own purposes instead of passing it on to Eskom. The point she didn’t make is that municipalities would find it a lot easier to pay their Eskom bills if the state, the provinces and the state-owned enterprises settled their debts with municipalities.

The speaker of the Cape Town city council, Dirk Smit, says it is conservatively estimated that municipalities are owed five times as much as they owe Eskom.

And then there are Eskom’s direct customers, such as the residents of Soweto, who owe Eskom billions of rand for electricity. What is Eskom doing to collect this money?

Janine Myburgh
President, Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry