Thank you, Chair. On the side of the government I think we have encouraged all government departments and all institutions of government to pay for services consumed, especially to Eskom. There was a concerted effort on the side of Cabinet to ensure that each and every department that owes Eskom it is paying. The challenge remains with the municipalities which is the task before the Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Cogta, together with the municipalities. Of course, in the main, municipalities have a challenge in terms of their metering. They are not billing citizens correctly. There is always a dispute on the amount that people are owing.
However, you are spot on to say that this culture of our people of nonpayment must be dealt with. We have on a number of occasions in different platforms conveyed this message that the time for resistance is over, we had to resist and fight apartheid but now it is time to turn on reconstruction. It is important for all of us to pay for services that we consume. On illegal connections, it is a responsibility of municipalities to ensure that people don't temper
with their grid and distribution lines. In such a case, the municipality must be able to detect earlier where there is tempering and illegal connections. It is quite clear that municipalities don't have the necessary capacity to detect illegal connections on time and deal with those.
Now, the district model in terms of service delivery that is led by the President - of which I am chairing the interministerial committee, IMC, - in the main we seek to support the municipalities to be able to collect money, to put down systems; systems of collections, billing systems and meters. We call upon our people and our law enforcement agencies to deal with those who are stealing the cables and those who are illegally connecting into the grid. The problems that Eskom is facing today are partly from us as citizens. Thank you.