City Power threat to nonpaying customers ‘could lead to unrest’

With City Power deciding to no longer respond to outage calls by nonpaying customers, the decision could lead to unwanted results.

The electrical entity stated the cutting of power would include nonpaying customers or defaulting customers.

A resident from Lenasia, Dineo Mapholoba, said City Power’s decision was extreme.

“It is not like they even respond to paying customers. Everyone will just be affected by this,” she said.

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Mapholoba said City Power should stop providing “free electricity” to informal settlements.

“Because the truth is, they get free electricity and us, the paying customers, have unending electricity problems. We are only left with having no electricity for hours and the problems do not even get resolved,” she said.

Unrest

Energy specialist Lungile Mashele said City Power’s decision was generally counterintuitive and could lead to unrest.

“I assume they will avoid attending to individual homes, not areas. This will place their employees at risk should they be seen in an area but not providing services to certain homes.”

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Mashele said the entity needed to get to the bottom of nonpayment.

“But this method would only enrage people and maybe even put the families who did pay in danger.”

City Power’s spokesperson, Isaac Mangena, said the decision came as the entity battled pressures of the grid amid load shedding and low revenue collection. It is understood City Power is owed around R10 billion in unpaid electricity bills by some residents of Joburg.

“As City Power, we operate in an environment that often has complex and expensive priorities and expectations from a variety of stakeholders.

“We will increase our efforts to collect the outstanding debt from customers,” Mangena said.

The entity had embarked on an auditing process and would assess customers’ meters and vending history before the dispatch of a team to attend to the calls, he said.

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“During a medium-voltage (MV) outage, at least 70% of the customers in that area should be paying customers. If not, our technicians will not go ahead with repairs or restore power in those areas,” he said.

City Power revenue collection

Energy expert Ruse Moleshe said in terms of credit management policy, City Power should not have been in the position they found themselves in with regards to collections. That had now led to these tactics. Moleshe said it was not a sustainable way of running a utility to not collect revenues because it would eventually catch up with them.

“If you do not recover collections, you will lack in things such as infrastructure, refurbishments, or new additions to infrastructure.”

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Moleshe said paying customers would suffer due to the city not being able to recover finances for services provided.

“That means the service done will be lower and will impact on everyone.”

City Power had already written to Naturena residents informing them of their plans to not respond to electricity outages in the area until their teams were allowed to ensure revenue collection was enhanced.

But African Transformation Movement and community leader at Naturena Zoyisile Mothobi said he worried the new system would have dire financial implications to people.

The residents have been given until Friday to allow City Power teams in to audit meters. Naturena is using both old electricity meters and the new systems.

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