has been tasked with looking into the process that the provincial government needs to undertake to implement this resolution.has appointed a legal firm that is taking care of the proposal on how the state bank will be funded, how it would run, how it would operate in our province,” he said.
“You can only recover R512 million because people are unemployed and some of them are grannies,” he said. “If you cannot collect that amount of money, then what is the best mechanism?Lesufi“In doing so, we are not encouraging those who can afford to pay not to pay. That is why we need to strengthen the user-pays principle.”
Lesufi said he was not blind to the possibility of the problem recurring and would propose to Soweto residents they commit to pay for prepaid electricity before the provincial government scrapped their debt.Lesufi hit back at those who are against writing off Soweto’s debt, accusing them of having double standards as they did not complain when the e-toll debts were scrapped entirely in the province.
“Debt is debt, it must not have colour, it must not be about race and it must not be about where people stay. “Scrapping of the debt is to protect the poor, the old and the vulnerable,” he said.“If people listen to what Lesufi said on the scrapping of electricity debt, we are going to make the whole culture of non-payment and culture of entitlement worse.