Electricity - Right or Privilege?

Without blowing my own horn – am I the only one who doesn’t think that this Eskom price hike is the worst thing in the world?
The Problem – Eskom does not have enough capacity to meet the countries demands - resulting in blackouts and the now infamous term of “load-shedding”.
The Solution – build more infrastructure to cope with the demand.
The South African response – GASP! You can’t do that because us consumers are already battling away here and this is just going to hit us harder… but we still want electricity and when we don’t get it we are going to complain.
A lot of South Africans have been very surprised to learn that we currently enjoy some of the lowest electricity tariffs in the world. Even post these price hikes we will still be attractive compared to other countries.
So Eskom gets, say a 60% price hike which is inevitable – if you want electricity that is what it is going to cost. However this raises two issues for me:
1. What are they going to do with the billions that will go into their coffers?2. Who exactly do these increases get applied to?
Where is the money going?If the money is just going to go into commissioning another old coal plant then it is just money being wasted. One must remember that Eskom has two more plants already coming online and these will meet South Africa’s grid demands by the end of 2008. A new coal plant being commissioned in 2010 will not make an iota of difference to consumers now.
However if Eskom were bright they would start addressing one of the major problems which is HOW South Africans are using their electricity and how Eskom is supporting these consumers.
Bluntly:- Their call-centre is kak and consumers are going nuts in the dark trying to figure out what is happening- Eskom do not have maintenance skills and regimes in place to maintain the infrastructure they do have – I do not mean to be facetious but with the maintenance issues the company has been having, one cannot help but imagine monkeys running around the power plants trying to work out what is wrong.- It should be a priority exercise to remove all non “energy-saving” bulbs from houses and from circulation in shops. If this had been done 5 years ago we would not be experiencing at least 30% of the problems that we are seeing now- Establishment of gas and nuclear energy infrastructure as well as alternative energy systems to take non priority stuff off the grid- Instead of criticising business and mines for their consumption and telling them to stop working so hard so that Eskom can recover – they should be working with these guys to subsidise independent energy supplies for the mines that don’t pull from the centralised grid – mines can go on churning out revenue and making money without being a strain on the electricity supply.
Who do these increases get applied to?This I think is the crux of my argument. The trade unions and politicians all came out very aggressively saying that these price hikes were unacceptable and going to hurt consumers – blah blah blah. It became something of a political hot potato and Eskom apparently took a step back and was being quoted in newspapers as saying that these increases will not be applied to the lower income consumers.
This is where I become a bit grumpy.
Is electricity a right or a privilege? The way Eskom is talking at the moment electricity is a privilege – if I want electricity in my house or business then I must pay for this. This is fine but then it is a privilege for everyone not just those who can afford it.
If it is a basic human right then it must be subsidised by somebody and not me subsidising somebody else.
I am not sure how true it is but I know when the load-shedding was at its worst a few people I know joked that it is better for them to go back into the townships because at least there they knew they got a regular, reliable electricity supply. If this is true then it grates me big time.
At the end of the day – I have no issue with the increases – the reality is that South Africans have been spoilt and Eskom has been mismanaged. Now when the cracks eventually become too big we are shocked by the big increases. I do however have an issue with the way the increases are to be utilised and I hope that Eskom and government come out with a proper and fair strategy that South African consumers can understand and accept.