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Bloemfontein Eskom to start rationing on Dec3


Ironman

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https://www.fin24.com/economy/breaking-eskom-warns-it-will-stop-providing-daytime-power-to-bloemfontein-unless-it-gets-paid-20191125?mobile=true

https://twitter.com/Eskom_SA/status/1198952306735288321/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^embeddedtimeline|twterm^profile%3AEskom_SA&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eskom.co.za%2FPages%2FLanding.aspx

If I were a solar installer, I would temporarily move to Bloemfontein - everybody who could afford to add R100-200k to their home loan debt will be clamouring for a solar system. Most will go completely off grid - cutting off more and more of Eskom's income.

This is a bit tongue in cheek - but a serious electricity supply situation is developing in one of our large metro's.  Eskom wants to cut power every day from 6AM to 8PM. All the citizens that pay their accounts every month will suffer together with the few that has robbed/stolen/mismanaged the city's finances to cause this issue.

🙄

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5 minutes ago, Ironman said:

All the citizens that pay their accounts every month will suffer together with the few that has robbed/stolen/mismanaged the city's finances to cause this issue.

🙄

This is the difficulty with switching off a township in total.

I also reckon the real story doesn't get through for those who want to know. However that doesn't mean nothing should be done by Eskom in recovering monies owed.

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10 hours ago, Richard Mackay said:

As Michael Avery of Classic Business asked, why don't they tackle Soweto that's 10 years in arrears with electricity payments?

I was looking at Eskom statistics on how many prepaid meters have been bypassed and it’s shocking.

There is a major culture of thieving amongst its customers.

Surely by now Eskom should have figured it out for themselves.

New technologies exists and anybody with a calculator should be able to figure the financial side out.

But then, we are talking about the ANC voters. People with inalienable rights and privileges.

My town has now started loadshedding areas where the “voters” are reluctant to pay. I’ll watch the process as it unfolds. Should not be too long before the town hall is burnt down.

I don’t know who else saw the extremely low price per kwhr the Zimbabweans have been paying for electricity until recently. It was obviously a ploy to keep them quiet and happy.

Edited by Johandup
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I really don't see how such a heavy rationing helps anybody. When you're not supplying power (as a punitive measure for past non-payment) you're also not selling any new power. This means your businesses close down (so no new power will be sold later either). Your municipalities also make profit on the sale of that electricity, so they too lose one of the very things they can use to get money to pay for the arrears. (Not that I'm saying they will of course).

The best option is obviously to strike some kind of deal, some arrangement. Which is probably what will happen in the end, if history means anything.

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1 minute ago, plonkster said:

I really don't see how such a heavy rationing helps anybody. When you're not supplying power (as a punitive measure for past non-payment) you're also not selling any new power. This means your businesses close down (so no new power will be sold later either). Your municipalities also make profit on the sale of that electricity, so they too lose one of the very things they can use to get money to pay for the arrears. (Not that I'm saying they will of course).

The best option is obviously to strike some kind of deal, some arrangement. Which is probably what will happen in the end, if history means anything.

Now, if they could only schedule their unit breakdowns and Bloem rationing to happen at the same time .....

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The roots of this go a long way back, to pre-94. There were two problems

1) A lot of folks living in townships didn't pay for services per se. They had communal connecitons (EG one supply for a block of 4 flats, with one circuit breaker) and they got charged a flat rate for rental, services etc according to their income. There was no billing for consumption, but consumption was controlled (in theory) by a limited supply- shared connections with a single circuit breaker so that if your neighbour overloads, several homes lose power and the offender is in bad odor. Also limited taps, light fittings and sockets per dwelling. But once people figured out how to tap directly into supplies this model broke down.

2) Refusal to pay as a means of protest. This is my beef with people like Helen Zille who threaten a tax revolt. This model doesn't work. As Tony Blair recently said, the problem with revolutions is not how they start but how they end. The initial principle has something going for it. But the result is that people get used to not paying, and when the original problem is removed and you ask people to start paying again they're not very keen to do so. The ANC rode a tiger. As they saying goes, riding a tiger is a lot of fun, until you get off.

I don't blame Eskom for trying to recover losses. A bit of pressure can work. COJ recently won against Gautrain who had not paid for services at their flag ship Sandton station for years. COJ cut water to a trickle. Customers couldn't go for a pee. The bill soon got paid. However, it wasn't the fault of people like me who pay our fare and when we got off the train at Sandton were bursting and either had to go to Starbucks for a cup of coffee we didn't want or keep our legs tightly crossed until we got home.

Too often it's the honest people who pay their way that get caught in the middle.

But on the bright side, yes, it's a great business opportunity.
 

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1 hour ago, Bobster said:

tax revolt

Again, I think Dawie Roodt explained this well. It all gets tied up into the formation of "the state". I cede my right to violence to the state, and in turn, the state gives me certain things and I pay them for it. If I stop paying, the existence of the state itself is in danger (at least eventually), and the result can only be anarchy and violence (especially when a large amount of your money pays grants).

Besides, we already have a kind of tax revolt going on. In an environment of corruption, a tax payer doesn't feel so bad when he deals in a bit of "hot" money. The citizens follow suit very quickly, perhaps not in large numbers, but a certain amount of tax morality is certainly lost already.

As an example, way back when Namibian president Sam Nujoma bought a new private yet, one of the farmers said to me: If he can afford a new jet, clearly he doesn't need more of my money!

The system itself actually rebels. In a profit sharing scheme (which is what tax is to some extent), if you mess up, your income comes down. SARS has had a shortfall for at least two years in a row now...

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The viability of grid power needs to be questioned as well. There are alternatives now which weren't available a few years ago and going from strength to strength.. 

See this article, although written in 2016 which is still relevant for Africa:  https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2016/10/29/africa-unplugged

 

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