By Eleanor Momberg
Eskom's drive to drastically hike electricity tariffs is a "shock and awe" tactic aimed at getting consumers to permanently slash their consumption.
Householders and businesses face punitive increases even higher than the 60 percent hike Eskom is seeking from the national regulator.
Eskom wants varied tariffs, with poorer consumers getting a 30 percent hike, while most households and businesses would be slapped with 70 percent increases.
This was the message given to economists at a briefing by officials of the department of public enterprises.
Cosatu last week called for sympathy strikes across the country for workers who had lost their jobs because of the power crisis.
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"We are adamant that workers should not be asked to pay for the government's and Eskom's crazy mistakes," Cosatu general-secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said.
In a briefing paper from Azar Jammine, chief economist of Econometrix, economists were told: "The rationale behind hiking electricity tariffs so steeply all at once is to shock consumers into adjusting their behaviour to reduce the demand for electricity permanently by 10 percent.
"From a medium-term perspective, a hike will also provide an incentive for cogeneration as a means of increasing the supply.
"In the longer term it will pave the way for attracting private-sector players into electricity generation."
Jammine's report came as consumer bodies, business and unions reiterated calls to Eskom and the government to take full responsibility for the crisis.
They called on Eskom and the government to stop neglecting the macro-economic effects of the power shortages and said a national electricity summit involving all roleplayers, including consumers, needed to be held urgently to come up with ways to navigate the crisis.
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