City Power cuts off non-paying customers in Roodepoort

The Executive Mayor of the City of Johannesburg Councillor Thapelo Amad led the cut-off operation against defaulting and non-paying customers in the Roodepoort area.

During the operation, which took place on Wednesday, February 1, Amad was joined by City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava and Acting Group Chief Financial Officer Mbali Buthelezi.

The targeted customers included businesses, key customers, government institutions, and some townhouses and flats.

Mashava used the opportunity to update on the entity’s financial position, plans to turn it around, the debt owed to City Power, and how much has been recovered thus far since the operation started across the City of Johannesburg.

During the drive to recover revenue debt in Roodepoort, Mashava commended the customers who continue to pay for their electricity bills.

City Power is owed in excess of R1.2 billion by the customers in Roodepoort alone.

According to Mashava, at least R10 million was collected on the same day of the operation, including an R5 million debt paid by the Department of Education for a school with a defaulting account. Numerous companies also paid when they heard City Power was about to disconnect.

“We are happy with the customers who did the right thing and paid their accounts, we are however worried that they had to wait until City Power came knocking before they settled their debts. It goes to show that most of these customers have money and can service their debts but they elect no to,” said Mashava.

She told the Record the entity was disconnecting power supply as a last resort for customers who failed to pay for services.

“It is sad that customers who have the ability to pay for services, do not pay, we give them an opportunity to pay, but as a last resort we have no choice but to disconnect businesses, government institutions and residential households,” added Mashava.

City Power is owed about R7.9 billion by the residents across the city, with the majority of the debt sitting in the Inner City.

According to the power utility, the operation is part of City Power’s overall aggressive Revenue Collection campaign across the City of Joburg targeting defaulting and non-paying customers, those with bypassed meters and illegal connections.

Since November 2022 when the campaign started, City Power has collected close to R3.8bn from defaulting customers.

Mashava said City Power will intensify the revenue collection campaign to enable the entity to meet its core objective of providing reliable power supply, infrastructure maintenance and procure stock material which has been running out due to the higher stages of load-shedding.

City Power has urged its customers to come forward and fix their accounts, pay their debts or make arrangements before City Power comes knocking.

READ MORE: City Power issue Roodepoort outage update