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The Democratic Alliance in the Northern Cape today staged a picket in Kimberley against the fuel hike that is due to come into operation on Wednesday.

People in this province are already struggling to make ends meet with the escalating food prices that are directly affected by exorbitant fuel prices. Now people will have to choose between spending R25 on another litre of petrol to get them to work and their children to school, or on a bread and a tin of beans to feed their family.

The fuel price is clearly out of control and in a province as vast as the Northern Cape, where road transport is the only option, it is a total disaster.

The majority of the Northern Cape is rural. People who live in places like Rietfontein, Kuboes and Soebatsfontein, have to travel long distances, at increasingly high costs, to get to the nearest town to collect their grants, to get to a hospital, or even to get to a police station to lay a criminal charges.

In some cases, the benefits of collecting their grants will become completely nullified by the travelling costs that must be paid to do so. More people will skip their clinic appointments if they cannot get there by foot, resulting in more people defaulting on chronic medication. This will result in people getting sicker, and ultimately put a further burden on the already overwhelmed state. People will also opt not to make the trip to the police station to report crimes, enabling especially gender-based violence to thrive.

At the same time, a large part of the provincial economy relies on the roads to carry manganese, iron ore and food produce. Further fuel increases will collapse what is left of our economy.

It is time that this government stops fuelling the flames of poverty and suffering, and rather implements practical and doable interventions to ease the growing burden on people of the Northern Cape and of the greater South Africa.

The DA has initiated a petition for which we already received a record number of signatures countrywide, to call on the government to reduce taxes and lower fuel prices to make the cost of living affordable. We therefore appeal to all residents of the Northern Cape to stand together with us to stop the rise of petrol to R25 per litre in June and to join the #SlashFuelPrices campaign.

The fuel price increase will hit the people of this province the hardest and send thousands more people into a financial and humanitarian crisis. It must be opposed at all costs.

Issued by DA Northern Cape Provincial Leader, Harold McGluwa, MP