Electricity parastatal Eskom's latest tariff application was "a gross insult to vulnerable South Africans", the Democratic Alliance said on Tuesday.

Earlier, Eskom's CEO Jacob Maroga announced the utility had applied for a 45 percent electricity tariff hike for each of the next three years.

"The South African public is now carrying the cost of the ANC government's mismanagement," said the DA's shadow minister of energy Sejamothopo Motau in a statement.

"Eskom, a key utility, central to the lives of all South Africans, has been systematically reduced to an institution that operates on the red line, every day. That is not the public's fault."

South Africans had invested their faith in various African National Congress administrations to look after their interests.

Not a single person was fired, suspended or rebuked

"That good faith has not been repaid," Motau said, adding it had instead been abused.

"And, despite not a single person being fired, suspended or rebuked for Eskom's mismanagement ? if anything they have been rewarded with pay increases ? we are all now being (made) to foot the bill for a collective failure we are not responsible for."

Motau said this was not only an insult but a further abuse of the public's good faith.

"Because the message it is sending, when all the rhetoric is removed, is that not only will this government never act against those that are guilty of maladministration and bad judgement, they will be rewarded and when that same government has to compensate for its own inadequacies, it will turn to the public to bail it out."

Motau said it was "disgraceful" that Maroga had received a 26.7 percent salary increase.

He said the list of problems at the utility was now "seemingly endless", and each of these problems illustrated the fact that gross mismanagement was the real cause of Eskom's problems.

"There simply is not evidence to support Eskom's claims that higher input costs are the chief cause of these tariff rises ? indeed, the price of coal fell by 59.2 percent in August from a year ago."

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