More than one million electricity meters still need to be recoded before November deadline

Deputy Electricity and Energy Minister Samantha Graham says about 1.3 million electricity meters across the country still need to be recoded before the 24 November 2024 deadline.

According to Eskom, after this date, all Standard Transfer Specification (STS) compliant meters will stop accepting credit tokens. Most meters in the country fall within this category.

Of the 6.9 million meters that needed to be recoded by Eskom, 6.6 million are done. The power utility still needs to recode about 300,000 meters. Municipalities had four million meters to recode, and they had about 1 million left.

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“What needs to happen now is that users of the prepaid meters need to go and buy their prepaid electricity and they will be provided with a code that they can input their meters and that will allow them to roll over into the new cycle,” said Graham in a media briefing on Monday.

Customers who fail to recode them before the deadline will need to apply for a reconnection. This will come at a cost.

Joburg meters

City Power said on Friday that its Token Identifier (TID) rollover project had now reached 91% overall completion across all our Service Delivery Centres (SDCs) areas of supply within the City of Johannesburg.

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“This marks a pivotal moment in the project’s development and reflects our continued commitment to ensuring that our customers are not left behind once the deadline arrives,” said spokesperson Isaac Mangena.

“Over the past months, our accredited technicians were deployed across the City to audit, reset, and replace prepaid meters at no cost to customers. Thus far, 145 507 of the 160 738 have been recoded successfully.”

In April, City Power introduced a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) approach to expedite the recording of meters. The initiative was implemented in response to some residents declining access to City Power’s technicians at their properties.

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This is as about 125,048 meters had been tampered with to avoid paying for the electricity.

Electricity non-payment

With the country having enjoyed more than 130 days without load shedding, Electricity and Energy Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said the issue of non-payment was crippling municipalities across the country.

His ministry was engaging with the South African Local Government Association (Salga) in an attempt to protect municipalities and disadvantaged customers.

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Eskom is owed R78 billion by municipalities, said Ramokgopa. In return, municipalities are owed R349 billion by individual households, businesses and government departments. About 10 million households in the country qualify for free basic electricity, but only two million are receiving it.

“We need to resolve this question to protect the poor. We’re going to resolve that with Salga,” said Ramokgopa.