COJ issues termination notices to illegally connected residents

As the country grapples with stage 3 load shedding, Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba and MMC for finance Funzela Ngobeni have joined a Buya Mthetho operation in which city of Joburg officials have travelled around the city to issue pre-termination notices to property owners and large businesses with illegal connections to the city’s power grid.

According to the COJ’s Twitter page, operation Buya Mthetho “is a daily ward-based raid initiative focusing on the implementation of city’s bylaws within the municipality.”

The city reports that its revenue enhancement unit has been actively targeting large non-compliant developments to recuperate lost revenue when the city’s services are connected illegally. As such, officials issued invoices today requiring these non-compliant entities to pay up or risk termination of their connections with a particular focus on recently developed properties.

One such business, which has accrued a bill of R20 million since 2015, was handed an invoice today by the city’s mayor after the revenue enhancement team calculated said bill following a visit to the business a few weeks ago.

This particular operation is aimed at recovering funds that the city has lost through illicit connections in an effort to redirect those funds to key areas in the city’s budget.

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