Johannesburg residents are bracing themselves for a looming struggle due the increases in electricity, rates, water and refuse collection tariffs amid the negative effects of the pandemic.
On Thursday, the price of electricity in Johannesburg went up by 14.59%. This means a household that used 350kwh of electricity a month, at a cost of R596.06 including VAT, will now pay R683.01 for the same amount of energy. This represents a R75.61 increase for electricity alone while other municipal services have also gone up.
Richman Thompson, 66, of Klipspruit in Soweto, said the electricity hike could not have come at a worse time.
Thompson lives with his wife, who is also a pensioner, their three children and two grandchildren. The only person working at home is his daughter but she has been told to stay home due to the adjusted level 4 regulations that were announced a week ago. This means the entire family will have to rely on Thompson’s pension and that of his wife in the meantime.
“I will have to close my clothing accounts because I will not be able to afford them any more. I used them to buy clothes for my children,” he said.
Thompson said they were definitely facing tough times ahead.
“How are we expected to cope with such a high increase as pensioners? I have a car, which helps me to move about and we still have to eat,” he said.
Thompson spends about R400 a month on electricity. He still has to spend R300 on fuel for his car and about R1,500 on food.
But it is not just electricity that is going up in Johannesburg. Refuse tariffs will go up by 4.3%, while water and sanitation will surge by 6.8% in the country’s economic hub.
Property rates will increase by 2%. The city said the new tariffs had been calculated to minimise the negative affect that the Covid-19 pandemic had on the livelihoods of residents.
Thompson said the municipality did not seem to care for them as ratepayers.
The City of Johannesburg protected pensioners on its property rates policy. Anyone over 60 years old, living in a property that is less than R2.5m and earning less than R10,000 a month will not pay property rates.
This week, Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said households that got their electricity from municipalities would see tariffs rising by 17.8%.
Affected municipalities include Johannesburg, Cape Town, eThekwini, Ekurhuleni, Mangaung, Nelson Mandela Bay, Polokwane and Tshwane.
Customers who obtain electricity directly from Eskom have already seen a tariff increase of between 14.75% and 15.06% since April.
Johannesburg residents were lucky that their price increase was lower than the National Energy Regulator of SA approved tariff as the city was protecting them from the effect of Covid-19.
Small businesses were also not spared in the electricity hike. An entrepreneur who gave her name as Lorraine said her catering business in Roodepoort was now struggling.
Lorraine has had to lay off two of her four staff members due to low revenue under lockdown as corporate clients that used to order platters have stopped, as have weddings and parties.
That revenue, which ranges about R10,000 a month on average, was now no longer coming in, Lorraine said. Now she has to deal with the fact she will have to pay more than the R2,600 that she was paying for electricity every month.
“It is not fair; it is really wrong for us to get such a high increase under these circumstances. Some of the black businesses will have to close down,” Lorraine said.
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