Khayelitsha's Thabo Mbeki settlement is one of the first communities to benefit from South Africa's only regional electricity service provider, Red One, established in July 2005.

Les Recontre, director of Cape Town Electricity Services, said this was the first time an Eskom supply area, in this case Khayelitsha , has been electrified in partnership with the city council. "This meant the community could get electricity sooner, rather than having to wait for Eskom," he said.

Saleem Mowzer, CEO of Red One, said the electrification of Thabo Mbeki, within the first month of Red One's operation, is a "significant" achievement. "It shows that Red One is able to enter into partnerships with the city and Eskom to bring electricity to poor communities."

The Red One partnership with Eskom has also brought light to 1 000 residents of Nyanga. Although the residents fall into an Eskom-supplied area, they will now be added to the city's database and all repairs and supply demands will be managed by Cape Town Electricity Services. "It took a great deal of prompting to get Eskom to accept the right of a municipality to reticulate electricity," said Recontre.

But the harmonisation of tariffs needs to be finalised before the transfer takes effect. Recontre said a potential problem would be trying to marry the city's tariffs, formulated regionally, with Eskom tariffs which follow national formulations.

However, Recontre said there was not much difference between Eskom and city tariffs in the unicity.

(Source: The Cape Times / 12 October 2005)