GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
26 August 2023
The GOOD Party has placed its lawyers on standby to prepare to launch a class action on behalf of Cape Town residents to force the City to pay back millions of Rands it has been overcharging for electricity for more than a year.
The DA-led City is presently fighting the national electricity regulator Nersa in court – on two fronts – seeking the court’s permission to charge Cape Town consumers more than anyone else in the country pays for electricity.
Should the City fail to convince the courts that it has the right to charge whatever it wants for electricity, it must be forced to pay back the unlawful profits it is accruing.
For the 2022/23 financial year Nersa approved a 7.4% tariff increase, but Cape Town implemented a 9.6% increase.
The City is currently trying and convince the High Court that it is lawful to ignore Nersa’s rates (Case One).
For the 2023/24 financial year, Nersa approved a 15.1% increase, but the City implemented a 17.6% tariff hike on top of its hiked price from the previous year. This effectively equates to a 19.7% tariff increase this year.
The City launched an urgent application in the Gauteng High Court in June 2023 (Case Two) to get NERSA to approve its extortionary rates. The urgent application was struck off the court roll with the City having to pay the legal costs on the punitive attorney and client scale.
Residents of Cape Town are paying through the nose for all the litigation, besides being overcharged for electricity.
The City pleads poverty – the Mayor says the City will lose R500m in revenue this year if it implements the Nersa approved increase – but the truth is that Cape Town is not short of money.
The City has R8.6 billion cash in the bank, whereas it had budgeted to have
R7.4 billion at the end of the June 2023 financial year. That’s an unexpected windfall of R1.2 billion, more than twice the Mayor’s alleged losses.
Access to electricity is a basic right. The City brags about how many new electricity connections it makes, while at the same time making access to electricity practically impossible for struggling families by profiteering at their expense.
In the prevailing economic environment, for the City to make electricity unaffordable is repulsive and cruel – besides the dishonesty.
If the City refuses to do the right thing, it must be forced to pay back the money.
Media Enquiries:
Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
Cell: 082 518 3264
Email: bretth@forgood.org.za
Samantha Jackson, GOOD Acting Media Manager
Cell: 083 550 9875
Email: media@forgood.org.za