{"id":164371,"date":"2020-09-02T21:30:27","date_gmt":"2020-09-02T19:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/court-orders-eskom-restore-full-supply-immediately\/"},"modified":"2020-09-02T21:30:27","modified_gmt":"2020-09-02T19:30:27","slug":"court-orders-eskom-to-restore-full-supply-immediately","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/court-orders-eskom-to-restore-full-supply-immediately\/","title":{"rendered":"Court orders Eskom to restore full supply immediately"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The supply of electricity is the cornerstone upon which all the realisation of rights is based, North Gauteng Acting Judge Anthony Millar has told Eskom. Archive photo: Kimberly Mutandiro<\/p>\n

Eskom has been ordered by the high court to restore full maximum electricity supply to several areas in the Free State and Mpumalanga provinces immediately.<\/p>\n

North Gauteng High Court Acting Judge Anthony Millar heard a combined urgent application at the end of August.<\/p>\n

Applicants were the Vaal River Development Association, which represented communities in Parys and Vredefort in the Ngwathe municipality, and Lekwa Ratepayers\u2019 Association NPC, which represented residents of Standerton, Sakhile, Meyerville and surrounds in the Lekwa Municipality.<\/p>\n

They both had the same complaint \u2014 that Eskom was reducing electricity supply and this had resulted in an \u201cunfolding human and environmental catastrophe\u201d, with adverse affects on business, government departments, old age homes, hospitals and private citizens.<\/p>\n

By far the worst impact had been on the sewage reticulation system, which, the Vaal River Association said, had resulted in untreated sewage of about 200,000 people flowing into the Vaal River system at a point above the place where the drinking water for the municipality was extracted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe consequences, besides the fouling of the river system, has been a deterioration of the quality of drinking water and a commensurate increase in the risks of illness,\u201d Judge Millar said.<\/p>\n

In the Lekwa municipal area, the situation was \u201cmore dire\u201d, because of the greater industrial demand.<\/p>\n

In Standerton and Sakhile, manhole covers were serving as sewerage disposal points with raw sewage flowing into the streets and into the Vaal River, posing a severe health risk to all Gauteng customers whose drinking water was extracted from the Vaal Dam, the judge said.<\/p>\n

Eskom opposed the application, claiming that it had a contractual relationship with the municipalities. If there were any issues regarding sewage, the residents must sort that out with their local authorities, Eskom said.<\/p>\n

Eskom justified the load reduction using its \u201cNotified Maximum Demand\u201d (NMD) agreements with the two local authorities, which peg the amount of electricity to be supplied and set punitive tariffs should that supply be exceeded. This was permitted under National Electricity Regulator rules as a mechanism for future consumption and infrastructure planning.<\/p>\n

Judge Millar said there had been no increases in the NMD for both areas in more than a decade, but Eskom had been supplying excess electricity to both for some period of time.<\/p>\n

Its recent \u201cstrict\u201d enforcement had now resulted in reduced supply to the municipalities which were, in turn, imposing rotational load shedding.<\/p>\n

He said Eskom was a state-owned enterprise which had a monopoly on the supply of electricity \u201cnot only for the purpose of generating income but also for the promotion of the rights of individual citizens\u201d.<\/p>\n

Its enforcement of the NMD contracts infringed on the rights of residents and communities.<\/p>\n

While the right to electricity was not specifically provided for in the Bill of Rights, the right to dignity, life and housing were, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe supply of electricity is inextricably intertwined with at least these three rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe supply of electricity is the cornerstone upon which all the realisation of rights is based. Homes cannot be built \u2026 water cannot be pumped, sewerage reticulation cannot operate. Healthcare requires running water and electricity,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n

He pointed to the fact that both municipalities had now incurred considerable debt through penalties. \u201cFor as long as \u2026 penalties and interest charges which Eskom levies on the municipalities exceed the cost of actual consumption, paying consumers will be saddled with hopelessly insolvent municipalities which have no prospect of paying their outstanding debt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judge Millar granted a punitive cost order against Eskom saying \u201cmost telling\u201d was its indifference to the consequences of supply reduction once these were brought to its attention.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u00a9 2020 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The supply of electricity is the cornerstone upon which all the realisation of rights is based, North Gauteng Acting Judge Anthony Millar has told Eskom. Archive photo: Kimberly Mutandiro Eskom has been ordered by the high court to restore full maximum electricity supply to several areas in the Free State and Mpumalanga provinces immediately. North […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":164372,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-164371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/court-orders-eskom-to-restore-full-supply-immediately.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}