Bouwe van der Eems

Member since 4 November 2025

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Bouwe van der Eems4 months ago The highest cost driver is the Eskom price increase.Although the city has made progress in automating the SSEG approval process and finding lower cost bi-directional residential electricity (AMI) meters for residential owners, the requirement that residents must provide meter housing on the boundary wall still makes it prohibitively expensive to export electricity. This has limited the extent to which the city can buy low cost electricity from its own residents.The prohibitive installation costs of meter housing on the border wall can be addressed by making use of split phase bi-directional smart meters that can be installed in existing meter housing. Currently the city is installing split phase pre-paid meters. The same infrastructure used for the meters can be used for split phase bi-directional smart meters.The insecurity of the longevity feed-in tariff adds to the hesitance for homeowners to invest in these meters. CoCT should announce their long term intention regarding the feed-in incentive of R0.25 / kWh, since payback for the required AMI meter is currently longer than 3 years.An additional benefit of this is that electricity prosumers remain as electricity customers and do not disconnect from the grid.The city can get additional benefits by adding residential prosumers in a pool and claiming carbon credits for these residents.

Bouwe van der Eems4 months ago Areas with CID’s should be given the option to perform their own cleaning of public land and owners in those areas should then be exempted from the city wide cleaning tariff. CID’s are able to provide services at a lower cost level, because they are not required to comply with national frameworks and procurement policies.This will make it more attractive for residents to establish CID's and reduce the burden of City Wide Cleaning on the city.

Bouwe van der Eems4 months ago The second highest cost driver is inflexible staff costs.This can be addressed by establishing an initiative within the Core Application Refresh (CAR) programme that investigates the use of artificial intelligence technology in order to automate administrative processes and improve customer satisfaction. Part of this initiative could be to develop business cases for automation in combination with voluntary retrenchment schemes.

Bouwe van der Eems4 months ago When pensioner households apply for rebates, they must also declare all their investments, rainy day savings accounts, policies, etc. This unfairly disqualifies many prudent and responsible pensioner households that survive on much less than R27,000 per month. This could be addressed as follows:a. Base the pensioner rebate on consumed pension income and exclude interest on investments used for cumulative interest and not consumption.b. Determine Valuations of Life right owners on the value of their life right and not on a fictitious valuation that they will never be able to cash in due to the nature of their contract with the developer.

Bouwe van der Eems4 months ago Restructure law enforcement to apply by-laws more stringently by including building inspectors in safety and security and collect fines for illegal land-use and development. Due to fraud and corruption in development and landuse districts, there are many commercial and industrial ratepayers that are allowed to pay residential property rates. Including building inspectors under law enforcement will empower the city to ensure that all properties are zoned correctly.

Bouwe van der Eems4 months ago

Bouwe van der Eems4 months ago Procurement costs can be reduced by migrating to a policy of value for money procurement. This can be promoted by the following steps:1) The estimated total cost of preferential procurement premiums, based on the transparency report, should be indicated as a separate item in the budget. This will empower councillors to make a more informed vote on the budget. 2) The city should perform a referendum under its ratepayers to determine public support for preferential procurement.3) The city could choose BEE weightings that predominantly benefit Cape Town residents instead of arbitrary biological attributes. Since this might clash with national legislation that mandates preferential procurement, CoCT should collaborate with civic organizations that have specialized litigation units that successfully challenge preferential procurement. Since there is also international opposition to the preferential procurement such parties could be approached to assist with the funding of litigation and applying pressure through international trade organisations.

Bouwe van der Eems4 months ago The second highest cost driver is inflexible staff costs.Many of the structural cost drivers affecting municipalities originate in national frameworks. Municipalities that wish to challenge these frameworks, are themselves bound by preferential procurement constraints that limit flexibility in appointing specialised litigation teams.Staff costs can be contained by challenging nationally binding collective bargaining agreements. It cannot be justified that municipal staff costs are determined by collective bargaining agreements, while the majority of the ratepayers are not assured of similar increases. This challenge could start by performing research into the salary increases received by its ratepayers and use this to formulate to design amendments to labour legislation that does not allow for collective bargaining agreements to undermine the sustainability of municipalities. These amendments could be submitted in a private bill in parliament.

Bouwe van der Eems4 months ago The highest cost driver is the Eskom price increase.The city already has plans to procure 500MW from energy traders at lower costs than Eskom. See article at https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/cape-town-seeks-500-mw-from-energy-traders-at-below-eskom-rates-2026-04-01 Interested parties have until 13 May to respond to the tender. It is recommended that this initiative is implemented with a phased approach and some of the early phases are accelerated to deliver at least some benefits in the 2026/27 financial year.