Jacci Babich of Blackheath writes:
Costly, illuminated ANC advertisements extolling Joburg Metro’s successes – including that of City Power – have hit the streets in pre-election fever.
Such claims, however, are belied by City Power’s quarterly reports and financials. Many sections of its latest financial report (Q3) appear to have been simply copied from the previous quarter’s report. These include the question of how the shocking sum of R51.4 million owed by government entities remains unchanged?
In contrast, the methodology used in reporting meter reading percentages has changed. This has resulted in conflicting figures from one quarter to the next.
The recent rollout of smart meters has been marred by many serious problems. It appears a significant number of meters are faulty. This could be due to contractor negligence when installing the meters or technical problems with the hardware and/or the interface.
Meter readers continue to read many of these meters manually as they cannot transmit information to the SAP billing system. This has resulted in an increase in the number of billing complaints being received every month.
Judging by their own report, City Power does not have the necessary resources, management skill or technical support to effectively manage the electricity distribution system. Apart from many other issues, the standard of workmanship by many of the contractors used by the utility is often of very poor quality, resulting in repeated call-outs for the same fault and/or damage to the infrastructure.
The steady increase in outages reflected in the Q3 report is an indicator of the fragile state of the electricity distribution infrastructure. What we are looking at is nothing short of widespread system failure.
It’s not all gloom and doom for embattled ratepayers, however. A landmark case heard recently in Gauteng means municipalities have to prove your bill is correct. They can’t just demand that you pay inflated and/or incorrect bills.
This is a big step forward in dealing with the ongoing problem of incorrect municipal bills in the City of Joburg.
