
Cape Town residents protest ‘unaffordable’ electricity tariff increase
Civic organisations and political parties marched against the electricity tariffs on Saturday.
Civic organisations and political parties marched against the electricity tariffs on Saturday.
With the cost of living at an all time high, residents of the Cape Flats say they are buckling under the pressure of new electricity tariffs. The City of Cape Town has implemented an increase that the energy regulator itself has condemned.
The city has identified 46 flood-prone informal settlements across the metro and assembled a winter task team made up of 25 city departments and external partners under the leading role of the Disaster Risk Management Centre.
The general sense in the room was that the imbizo was little else than a talkshop and residents of informal settlement told the housing minister that they are tired of empty promises.
Residents of particularly informal settlements founded on vacant land during the 2020-2022 lockdown, say that they are subjected to constant harassment by law enforcement officers.
Funeral arrangements are underway for a homeless man who was shot and killed by a City of Cape Town law enforcement officer.
Residents of Ramaphosa informal settlement say they want the company contracted to clean their toilets to employ people on shorter term bases to make more jobs available.
Land occupiers whose homes in Empolweni and Ethembeni were wrecked by the flood of sewage have appealed to the City of Cape Town for help but the City is refusing.
Land occupiers promise to return to land they are evicted from as they cannot afford to rent the backyard shacks they stayed in before.
SAMWU is building its own database of unemployed workers and wants the City of Cape Town to use it when recruiting for EPWP projects.
Data in South Africa is the most expensive in the world and cellphone companies are making super-profits from it, but MTN still uses the plight of informal settlement residents to get free advertising.
Despite spending R180-million on the Kuyasa Interchange in 2008, the market stalls at the station have remained white elephants.