Municipality needs access to meters

Residents’ unwillingness to cooperate with an audit of water and electricity meters, compelled the Modimolle-Mookgophong Municipality to send out a notice recently that such residents’ services will be suspended.

The company Cigicell, on behalf of the municipality, conducts audits on houses and business premises.

“The municipality has experienced difficulties in accessing some households and therefore would like to inform the public that services will be terminated if access is not granted going forward. We hereby request that the public provide municipal officials as per previously issued notice access to enable the audit of meters and update customer information,” the notice read.

It said that according to the municipal credit control policy, the municipality has the right of access to premises. The owner and or occupier of the premises should give authorized representative access at all reasonable hours to the premises to read, inspect, install, or repair any meter or service connection for reticulation, or to disconnect, stop, restrict, or reconnect, the provision of any service. The owner bears the cost of relocating a meter if satisfactory access is continuously denied. If a person contravenes the control policy, the municipality or its authorized agent may by written notice require such person to restore access at his or her own expense within a specified period. If it is deemed that the situation is a matter of urgency, the municipality can, without prior notice restore access and recover the cost from such a person.

According to ward councillor Wiets Botes the audit has uncovered several residents who were stealing water or electricity. The municipality will cut off such services and a criminal case will be opened against them.

“One of the reasons this audit is necessary is because the codes used in many meters will expire at the end of the year and the meters will no longer be working,” he said.

According to a statement on Eskom’s website, all prepayment meters based on STS technology will not accept new credit tokens once these vending codes have expired. They will stop dispensing electricity after the existing credit is used up and the meter will become inactive. Each credit token has a unique token identifier (TID) encoded in the 20 digits to prevent token replay at the meter. The TID is referenced to a base date of 1993 and will run out of range in 2024, causing the prepayment meter to stop accepting new tokens. “If your meter has not been re-coded, it will not accept the tokens you have purchased, which means it will stop working.

“All prepaid meters must be re-coded, whether you are an Eskom customer or a municipally supplied customer,” the electricity provider said.

Residents who have queries can contact Johannes Molekoa on tel. (014) 718 2025 or via e-mail on molekoa@modimolle.gov.za or Tebogo Mokone on tel. (014) 718 2015 or e-mail tmokone@modimolle.gov.za(.)