Pretoria — For hundreds of poor families living in impoverished villages in and around northern KwaZulu- Natal, the future looks bright.

This after government, led by Premier Lionel Mtshali and Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, lit up almost a 1 000 households at the weekend. The move formed part of the government's national electrification roll out programme to bring solar energy to poor rural households countrywide, over the next five years.

The two leaders switched on the programme at the Mkuze airstrip, several kilometers outside Pongola, officially linking the households to the R58 per month government subsidized solar home systems (SHS).

According to the department of minerals and energy (DME) poor households generally have a low demand for electricity and the SHS would address their needs - which in the past has been taken care of by candles, batteries and paraffin.

SHS provides sufficient power for lights, TV and radio, limited water heating, basic ironing and cooking.

Households that consume more than the basic allocation would have to pay for it.

Government aims to provide rural households with 50kw of electricity in line with its free basic services mandate to alleviate the negative impact of poverty on 30 percent of cash-stripped families that are not connected to the national electricity grid, over the next five years.

Cabinet adopted the public-private programme, under the auspices of the minerals and energy department two years ago as its flagship project to bring relief to destitute rural families that are not connected to the national grid.

Speaking to BuaNews, Marius Willemse, managing director of NuRa, a company tasked with rolling out the programme in the region, said his corporation intended to supply 50 000 households with SHS in KwaZulu-Natal from the Tugela River Mouth to Mozambique and Swaziland border. This will also cover some parts in the Indian Ocean in the east and Newcastle in the west.

NuRa is a joint venture between the NOUN Dutch power utility and RAPS - a local multidisciplinary energy company that operates internationally.

It is believed that the connection, which will be run along business lines, would cost R3-million, creating 400 job opportunities in the process.

The weekend linkage will bring the number of domestic customers connected to both grid and non-grid energy systems to more than 6.8 million.