3 years ago
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Johannesburg residents who do not pay for electricity will not get help during medium voltage outages.
Getty Images/ Evgen_Prozhyrko
- City Power will no longer restore power to Joburg residents who don't pay for electricity.
- The entity is owed around R10 billion in unpaid bills.
- It has embarked on a process to audit customers.
Johannesburg customers who refuse to pay for electricity will no longer receive support from City Power.
According to the electrical entity's spokesperson Isaac Mangena, City Power is owed around R10 billion in unpaid electricity bills.
Mangena said the entity has embarked on an auditing process and will assess customers' meters and vending history.
Before dispatching teams to a power outage, City Power will ensure that at least 70% of the customers in an area with a medium voltage outage are paying customers.
READ | City Power raids brick company allegedly connected to substation by utility's employees
"If not, our technicians will not go ahead with investigation, repairs or restore power in those areas.
"The entity is battling the pressures of the grid amid load shedding and low revenue collection targets," he said.
He added:
For this reason, we have embarked on a city-wide programme to ensure we get as many citizens as possible to pay for their electricity services - those that can. For those that can't, the City has programmes to assist the indigent residents.
According to the Local Government: Municipal Systems Management Act, Mangena said, "City Power is within its right to ensure it installs the prepaid meters for the purposes of revenue collection on behalf of the City".
He said the entity has "complex and often expensive priorities and expectations from a variety of stakeholders", and it will increase its efforts to collect the outstanding debt from customers across the city.
READ | Illegal reconnections hinder City Power's R10 billion debt recovery efforts
City Power is working towards "normalising" electricity Token Identifier (TID) meters in Joburg and cleaning up its data to ensure unmetered customers, "especially in non-affluent areas, have smart meters that will enable them to not only buy electricity but also to assist City Power to remotely monitor and control the load as we battle with load shedding".
In a statement on Tuesday, Mangena said customers with bridged or bypassed meters were encouraged to visit a service delivery centre to make payment arrangements.
Mangena said:
We further appeal to residents for cooperation and to allow our officials to gain access to their properties when they come to audit and normalise meters.
"These audits will be vital in preparation for the TID rollover as some of the meters cannot be reprogrammed.
"The TID resetting entails that every non-smart (old technology) meter should be replaced with the new technology meters. These old technology meters will stop accepting the credit tokens by November 2024 as the credit token will run out of available numbers."
Mangena said City Power had already informed the residents of Naturena, in the south of Johannesburg, of their decision not to respond to electricity outages in the area "until our teams are allowed to come and normalise the area to ensure revenue collection is enhanced".
He said the residents were given until Friday to allow the team in to audit meters.
"Should the resistance continue, we will no longer respond to power outages in Naturena from 12 May 2023."
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