‘Water and electricity meters to expire in November 2024’

The Rand West City Local Municipality (RWCLM) is urging its residents to start with the process of re-coding their water and electricity meters ahead of time as the current system will start rejecting old tokens come November 2024.

“The lifespan of the current vending codes is set to expire in November next year,” said RWCLM spokesperson Phillip Montshiwa.

As such, a new series of electricity vending codes will be introduced to all meters in South Africa.

“This will ensure that the meter’s key change code does not expire. If you are a RWCLM prepaid customer, you will need to take action to ensure that your meter keeps working and that you will still be able to top up your meter when you purchase your meter tokens. This applies to both water and electricity meters. All prepaid meters are based on STS technology which will stop accepting new credit tokens because of the expiry of these vending codes.

“This will mean they will stop dispensing electricity and water after the existing credit is used up, thus making the meter inactive. Each credit token has a unique token identifier (TID) encoded in the 20 digits to prevent token replay at the meter.

“The TID is referenced to a base date of 1993 and will run out of range in 2024. This will subsequently cause the prepayment meter to stop accepting new tokens,” said Montshiwa, who added that if residents’ meters have not been re-coded come November 2024, the system will stop accepting any tokens that they have purchased.

He continued to say this is a DIY initiative and the municipality will not be sending contractors to customers’ homes to help with the re-coding. As a result, the municipality urges people to not let anyone into their homes under the pretext that they want to help re-code their meter, no matter how convincing they may be.

“This is because criminals take advantage of these campaigns to gain access to community members’ homes and commit crimes.”

Steps to follow:

• Step 1
Key in the first 20 digits of your re-code token and wait for it to be accepted

• Step 2
Key in the second 20 digits of your re-code token and wait for it to be accepted

• Step 3
Key in the 20 digits of your purchased code to recharge your meter

The municipality also said that water and electricity meters bought in advance will not work once one’s meter has been re-coded. As such, all tokens purchased before one’s meter is re-coded must be loaded into the meter before the re-coding is done.

This is because once the meter is re-coded, the meter will reject old electricity and water tokens.