Protest at insufficient free services

2002-03-27 15:49

Cape Town - Traffic in the Cape Town city centre was disrupted on Wednesday as hundreds of African National Congress members and supporters took to the streets to vent their anger over insufficient free water and electricity.

The marchers carrying ANC paper flags marched from the Keizersgracht to the Cape Town Unicity offices where they handed over a memorandum to the acting city manager Dr Stuart Fisher.

Marchers carried an assortment of placards proclaiming "Water is a basic human right", "Away Morkel with your apartheid council", and "Down with the DA (Democratic Alliance) council", as they made their way along Darling Street, into Adderley Street and to the council offices.

ANC MPL and Cape Town regional secretary Max Ozinsky addressing the crowd in front of the council offices said it was not true that people were getting free basic services.

He also appealed to the council to stop evicting poor people from their homes who could not afford to pay for services.

"We want mayor Gerald Morkel to hear our demands," Ozinsky said.

Morkel was in a council meeting and unable to accept the memorandum which was accepted by Fisher.

The memorandum read out to Fisher by the ANC member of the provincial legislature, Whitey Jacobs, called for free basic services for all.

"We are citizens of Cape Town and people who live in areas which do not receive free basic services of water and electricity," the memorandum said.

Claims that all residents of Cape Town received free basic services was not true.

"Because we do not have water meters, we do not get the six kilolitres free basic water. Because we get our electricity from Eskom we do not get our 20kW/h of free basic electricity," the memorandum continued.

"We are the poor people of this city who need these free basic services the most. We are suffering every day because we do not receive free water or electricity. Every day we face the threat of being thrown out of our houses and our services being cut," Jacobs read from the memorandum.

Accepting the memorandum, Fisher said he would make sure the mayor received it.

The mayor's spokesperson Kylie Dawn Hatton later told the media, the mayor had noted the contents of the memorandum, the people's concerns and their demands.

Hatton said the memorandum would be forwarded to a multi-party working group - the debt reduction working group which looks at credit control and debt management in Cape Town.

Asked to respond to claims by Ozinsky that people who do not have water meters and get their electricity from Eskom do not get free services, Hatton said 25% of households in Cape Town get their electricity from Eskom.

"The city, when it implemented its free basic electricity policy, attempted to negotiate with Eskom that it would do the same," Hatton said.

"The response we got from Eskom was that they would not do this until a national policy on free electricity had been put in place. So the city can't move any further on that particular matter," Hatton said.

She said the mayor had appealed to people in a situation where they believed they were not getting the free water they're entitled to, to forward their grievances directly to the trading services directorate.

"In this way we can look at their grievances and address the problems.

"The city is prepared to listen to people who have legitimate complaints and requests for assistance," Hatton said.

- SAPA