The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse says the City of Johannesburg needs to review its expenditure instead of making customers pay for the upkeep of the electricity infrastructure.
The fee is intended to provide revenue to fund the city’s investment in new electricity infrastructure and for the maintenance of the existing one. OUTA CEO Wayne Duvenage says, “What we want them to do is to start looking at their own costs and reducing those becoming more efficient in the city. Because if they carry on running the city the way they are and they keep pushing these prices up and most of them are above inflation, this is a new revenue stream, it just becomes unbearable and too costly to own property and live in cities like Johannesburg.
“So what we’ve said is that, sure we understand the need for a fixed cost, it does apply to the postpaid users but you don’t do it in the way that they’ve done it. They haven’t engaged with the public meaningfully, so there’s been a lack of understanding of this fee. It’s quite an expensive fee,” adds Duvenage.