For many of us the years flash by. Proof of this, it’s again that time of year where Ekurhuleni tries to convince us that we’re getting great and efficient service delivery for the amount we’re charged.
As in past years all the (annual) increases for metro services are in excess of the official inflation rate.The main contributor to SA’s inflation rate is administered (government) costs. The latter mainly being electricity and fuel. We know the problem with Eskom and why we must pay rapidly escalating prices – a result of the usual gross corruption, fraud and jobs for pals that occurred over the years.
The only answer Cyril “I’m shocked” has is allocating more tax funds to Eskom (reallocated or “robbed” from other portfolios like education or health).
What about the hard decision of reducing Eskom’s high costs structure by drastically reducing excessive staff numbers and ridiculous perks for too many managers. There is also the small matter of huge outstanding debts.
Similarly with Ekurhuleni, get rid of the layabout cadres and employ people who will actually make an effort to collect outstanding amounts from errant rate-payers.
Why every time before an election does the metro write off billions of supposedly uncollectable debt?
If you join the dots and (say) 50 per cent of the above is collected surely our rates increase would be less than 7.5 per cent? Or the metro would need to borrow less money to fund capital expenditure (and thus save on interest charges).
What is obviously costed into the annual increases are the bad debt write-offs – Peter having to pay for Paul. The problem is all the non-paying Pauls vote for the party that is too inefficient and incompetent to supply reasonably good services.
We continue to suffer from poorly maintained infrastructure and no improvement in services.
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