I am neither a development economics nor a financial analyst, but I am going to use information in the public domain to analyse Eskom. Eskom is a state-owned enterprise and that makes its employees public servants, it is then to the benefit of the public for Eskom not to talk about profit but surplus and that surplus should benefit the public. It can be used to reduce the price of electricity or to freeze the price of electricity for a number of years while it expands its infrastructure. For the period to September Eskom made R9.3 billion profit but they went to Nersa for a tariff increase, which they got, and it will generate an extra R7.8bn in revenue.
How can a profit-making state enterprise want to suck dry taxpayers for that much while it is owed R4bn by municipalities and has made R9.3bn in profit? What makes a state enterprise with R9.3bn (profit) + R4bn (municipal debt) = R13.3bn go to government to suck R20bn from tax payers’ coffers?
Again I am not an analyst, but if for one year government exempt Eskom from paying tax, looking at September 30, 2014, figures it means they will have R12bn before tax to fund expansions, it will further collect R4bn from municipal debt then it’ll be having R16bn, that is only R4bn from what it got from government. And it will have to do with that like the rest of us.
How can the government continue to bail out Eskom while it can’t collect its debt of R4bn? How can the government bail out a profit-making body? How is a tax payer expected to cope with tariff increase while my tax also feeds this money hungry Eskom? How can the government continue to feed this monster while it is losing tax because we are losing revenue because of load shedding?
Maesela Enerst Ledwaba
Via e-mail
Bill of Rights provisions breached
Gordon Angus, the industrial relations executive at the Steel and Engineering Federation of South Africa, (“A breakdown of the collective bargaining system will result in chaos”, Business Report, November 24) cites “poverty, inequality, and unemployment” as underlying drivers of the increased militancy and violence in industrial action. He goes on to argue that any challenge to “the provisions in the Labour Relations Act which oblige the labour minister automatically to extend agreements reached between majority parties” (ie Section 32) could result in “serious damage to the country’s economy”.
Like so many labour commentators who defend Section 32 of the Labour Relations Act, he ignores its violation of the human and constitutional rights of the unemployed. The compulsory extension of agreements to non-parties, as provided for in Section 32, means that when the unemployed cannot get a job at the statutory minimum, the law prevents them from offering their labour at a lower price – at which they might be employed – in those parts of the formal sector covered by bargaining councils.
Section 32 breaches several provisions of the Bill of Rights in our constitution; including the rights to freedom of association; to following the trade and occupation of your choice; to fair labour practices; and to human dignity.
With the Section 32 legal disability preventing millions of jobless South Africans from selling their labour, we must expect ongoing poverty, inequality and unemployment. Now that is “serious damage to the country’s economy” and to the nation. Gordon’s article seems not much more than a plea that his employers be left in their comfort zone – regardless of whether intimidation and violence to artificially inflate the wage levels of several hundred thousand lesser-skilled members of organised labour prevails over the fundamental human right of millions of unemployed South Africans to sell their labour as best they can.
Michael Reitz
Constantia