SOWETAN SAYS | City Power must truly consult

The people of Johannesburg are angry. 

The city has introduced a monthly R200 service fee to prepaid electricity customers. 

The rationale is that there is simply not enough money to service the infrastructure which brings power to our homes. 

Until now, only postpaid users were charged this fee. 

In 2019, city authorities decided to introduce a similar tariff to prepaid customers – “freeloaders”, City Power calls them. 

Following a public uproar, it was shelved.  

The city tried again in 2021 and the attempt was met with the same reaction. 

In March, the fee was back on the table and following what City Power says were full halls of public participants, it was approved in council, albeit at a lesser amount than R500 initially proposed. 

The ANC-led coalition bloc of parties – which include EFF, APC, AIC, ATM – voted in favour of it when the budget was passed in May. 

This week it came into effect to much public outrage. 

Consumers argue, rightly so, that they cannot afford to pay more for power than what they already cough up. 

Our economy is in the doldrums and households are battling to make ends meet. 

The situation raises much more fundamental questions about the process of decision making in the council and in particular, how much of a say the public has in what is being decided about them. 

Many residents have rejected the claim that the public participation was sufficient. 

Many simply did not know that this fee was on the table for discussion to begin with. 

This either suggests public apathy, even about matters that concern our livelihood or an ineffective public participation process by the city. 

Considering the scale of the public backlash on this, much of it pointing to not being informed beforehand, it is reasonable to believe that the public participation process was either insufficient or ineffective to allow for a thorough debate on the matter. 

Importantly, this also raises questions about the quality of engagement political parties represented in council have with their constituencies. 

Either way, it appears decisions are being taken – justifiably or not – and the people affected the most are absent from the conversation.