Energy Expert and former executive manager of Eskom, Vally Padayachee says the system is failing the 8 million people who currently do not have access to Free Basic Electricity.
This comes after Electricity and Energy Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa revealed that 10 million households qualify for free electricity, but only 2 million have access to it.Padayachee reiterates that the qualifying methodology is taking longer than expected. “There’s a free basic framework that the COGTA has come up with. National Treasury allocates the monies to the equitable share grant which is distributed to each of the metros and the municipalities… Each municipality and metro gets the money to allocate for free basic electricity and at this moment, is for 50 Kilowatt . The people who should be getting it are seemingly not getting it because of a bottleneck from the system in the municipality,” he says.