Eskom starts free electricity awareness campaign for poor households

As of March 2020, Eskom had 900,000 registered indigent customers for free basic electricity, but only 700,000 people are collecting their FBE tokens.

In some cases electricity usage is not being recorded, in others payments previously received upfront will now only be collected 60 days later. Image: Supplied to Moneyweb

In an effort to alleviate the impact of the Covid-19 national lockdown on indigent households, Eskom has launched a campaign aimed at raising awareness of its Free Basic Electricity (FBE) programme which is targeted at giving these households limited free electricity.

The power utility has encouraged qualifying households to approach their municipalities to register as indigents in order to collect their allocated free basic electricity every month.

This will be done in terms of the government’s policy of providing support to the unemployed, the low-earning, the destitute and the elderly.

Once registered with the municipality, the customer’s details are loaded on the Eskom system where they get credited with free electricity tokens.

As of end March 2020, Eskom had 900,000 registered indigent customers for free basic electricity, but only 700,000 people are collecting their FBE tokens.

“Customers on municipalities’ indigent household registers have the right to collect a minimum 50 kiloWatt hours (kWh) of electricity for free every month, which can also be higher, depending on the municipality.

“Unfortunately a large number of indigent households don’t exercise their right, either because they are unaware of the free basic electricity, or because they have not registered with the municipality,” said the utility’s group executive for distribution, Monde Bala, on Tuesday.

Eskom is working with municipalities to ensure that indigent households receive their free electricity.

“The partnership with municipalities will go a long way to help cushion the indigent households from the full impact of Covid-19 lockdown,” Bala said.

Customers who qualify for FBE but who are not currently collecting it, must approach their municipality and register to receive their free allocation.

The campaign comes on the back of an announcement by Eskom that it will implement rotational load shedding to restrict electricity supply in Gauteng in order to reduce the extremely high costs associated with repeated equipment failure resulting from overloading

“It is prudent for us to take deliberate measures to significantly reduce the extremely high costs associated with repeated equipment failure resulting from overloading, which costs more as the power is indiscriminately used during peak periods,” Eskom maintenance and operations in the Gauteng operating unit Motlhabane Ramashi said on Tuesday.

The power utility continues to record a substantially high trend of energy demand during peak periods in the mornings and evenings between 5am and 9am, and again between 5pm and 8pm.

Eskom said its immediate response is to safeguard its assets from repeated failure and explosions as a result of overloading caused by illegal connections, meter bypasses and tampering with electricity infrastructure, which are on the increase.

“This unprecedented measure is necessary to contain the situation. We deem the constant repairs and replacement of equipment that fails before we can realise their investment as unwarranted, and this will not sustain our operations should we continue in this trajectory.”

This is line with Eskom’s priorities of containing operational costs and improve plant performance, Ramashi said.

Eskom will continuously monitor the developments to determine any improvements in addition to conducting audits, removing illegal connections and acting against meter tampering, as well as impose penalties for any transgression, among others.

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