R21 billion meant for free electricity to poor households used for other purposes

Minister of Electricity and Energy, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, said that money meant for free electricity for poor households is used for salaries and other purposes.

Ramokgopa shared this information during a media briefing about the ANC’s local government election manifesto launch.

“Annually, the National Treasury provides R21 billion for the purpose of supporting free basic electricity,” he said.

He said it is important to understand the flow of this money. “It’s not a conditional grant. It just gets allocated to municipalities.”

He said that a part of this R21 billion, which is given to the municipalities, is redirected to other resources.

“When the funds get to a municipality, they use them to plug their own spending pressures, like paying salaries and all sorts of other expenses,” he said.

“What they do not do is direct that money toward supporting indigent households with free electricity.”

To address this problem, Ramokgopa is advocating for an institutional rethink of how to deliver free electricity to poor households.

“We want to re-engineer the system so that the money doesn’t go to municipalities directly, but rather comes to the Department of Electricity and Energy,” he said.

“Working with Eskom, we can then direct it straight to the end consumer. We can achieve that by rolling out smart meters across the board.”

“With smart meters, we can front-load the allocation at the beginning of every month because the meter is intelligent and the units are preloaded.”

This is not the only problem Eskom and the Department of Electricity and Energy face. There is also widespread corruption and criminality.

“There are mini-Eskoms operating in informal settlements. You have seen instances of us removing stolen transformers. This is driven by a syndicate,” he said.

“In some cases, these stolen transformers involve delinquent workers from Eskom and local municipalities.”

“They provide an illegal service in those areas, and they are the ones agitating these communities to resist our intervention efforts when we go into those spaces.”