The Tshwane metro aims to convert about 162 000 households on electricity post-paid meters to pre-paid in the next three years.
This is an attempt to boost revenue collection and economic health of the municipality which has been recently described to be in a dire state by mayor Randall Williams.
During a press briefing last week, utilities MMC Phillip Nel said the installation of pre-paid electricity meters was important for improving revenue for the metro as it faced billions of rands owed to it by residents and businesses on consumed services.
In February, the metro began installing 24 000 pre-paid meters planned to be completed next year. Nel said to date, 10 995 meters had been installed and they would continue installing the remaining meters.
Nel said the municipality would target one suburb at a time, to speed up the installation programme,
“We will target a suburb and advertise that we are working in this area so the process can speed up. We hope that in three years, we will have converted most of the consumers within the region.”
Nel said the prepaid meters would also be installed in the upgrading of informal settlements in the region.
“The electrification in Itireleng informal settlement is a good example. There are four phases to this project. A total of 2 832 stands to be electrified this financial year (by end of June 2021). This project is funded from an urban settlements development grant and is a fully-funded project.”
According to the metro, in February a total of R17-billion was owed to it by residents and businesses.
The metro plans to recover this money in the pre-paid system for households that have arrears in their accounts by deducting 60% of the electricity purchase towards the debt. The remaining 40% would go towards the actual purchase of electricity tokens.
Tshwane spokesperson Selby Bokaba said this would continue until the debt was settled in full.
He said the metro was also addressing the backlog of 138 households that applied to be on the priority list for installation of pre-paid meters and paid a fee for this.
“The main reasons why some are still outstanding is due to lack of access due to tenants and owners’ differences. To address this issue, the metro invokes the by-laws by issuing notice and then replacing the meter as the responsibilities lie with owners and not tenants.”
About 162 000 out of 700 000 houses set to be converted to prepaid meters still needed installations.
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