Gauteng hospitals given 14 days to settle over R30 million electricity debt

City Power embarked on a revenue collection drive in Industria, Parkhurst, Hurst Hill and surrounding areas on Thursday, targeting defaulting business and residential accounts that owe a collective of R13 million.

Johannesburg’s power utility further paid a visit to the Helen Joseph Hospital and Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital to hand over disconnection notices, as the two owe about R32 million in total.

According to City Power, Helen Joseph Hospital owes more than R23 million, while Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital owes more than R7 million.

14 days to settle debt

During the operation, the hospitals were served pre-termination notices, which were received by the deputy director for finance at Helen Joseph Hospital and the acting CEO at Rahima Moosa, Dr Arthur Manning.

According to the pre-termination notice, the hospitals have 14 days to settle the outstanding balance, and failure to do so would result in the discontinuation or restriction of services, and legal action instituted.

“In the event that legal action is taken, the summons will include any further amounts outstanding at the date of issue thereafter,” the notice, shared with the media, said.

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Speaking to the media after visiting the hospitals, the general manager for revenue management at City Power, Thamsanqa Mathiso, said during their interaction with Helen Joseph Hospital, the hospital said they had processed the payments.

“What we then said is that during this period of 14 days while waiting for the pre-termination to expire, we will exchange records and track which payments are actually made,” Mathiso said.

“We will wait for the confirmations of payments, and if the payments come through, we are happy as City Power to confirm and not disconnect, but if it doesn’t, we will disconnect.”

Non-payment from government institutions

In a statement in the afternoon, City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena added that the utility was concerned with the levels of non-payment from government institutions.

“Government properties across the city owe over half-a-billion rand,” Mangena said.

“We will be clamping down on these defaulters as we intensify our revenue collection drive.”

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The Citizen sent the Gauteng Department of Health questions about the electricity debt, which was acknowledged, however, comment was not received by publication.

Meanwhile, the hospitals made headlines recently after they experienced water interruptions last month due to what the Gauteng Department of Health called “various challenges experienced by the water utilities, Rand Water and Joburg Water”.