Golden Triangle Chamber of Commerce (GTCoC) CEO, Klippies Kritzinger, confirmed earlier this week on inquiry that he was expected to meet with MM, Lucky Leseane, on Tuesday morning following Leseane’s permanent appointment from 1 February.
Eskom confirmed over the weekend it had ordered the Sheriff in Vanderbijlpark to attach ELM property worth R615 million due to yet another non-payment for February to the bulk utility provider by ELM.
Fears intensified over the weekend that Eskom would again threaten a cut-off of electricity to ELM – as happened late last year and only warded off by a last-minute ELM payment of R142 million – but Eskom itself did not answer queries in this regard.
At time of going to press this week it was not known if the Sheriff had physically seized ELM assets – reportedly including ELM bank accounts – although these had been formally attached last week.
No formal comment on the latest and ongoing Eskom/ELM drama was available from ELM itself, which did not respond to requests for comment from last Friday up to this week’s publication deadline.
The Kritzinger/Leseane meeting comes at a time of intense speculation as to the viability and revenue management efficacy of ELM and against the background of general non-payment of a swathe of service providers over and above Eskom.
Leseane is now confronted with the scorched earth mismanagement of his predecessor, Dithaba Oupa Nkoane – whose reckless and short-sighted ending of the ELM smart meter contract has seen a previously strong revenue stream reduced to costs, now estimated to be running at almost R130 million from July 2019.
The GTCoC/MM meeting is expected to focus not only on building relationships vital to partnering between organized business and ELM on service delivery and economic development issues, but also on major points of contention on when the ELM will pay back power tariff increases set aside by court order.
Kritzinger was also expected to brief Leseane on rising levels of anger and bitterness amongst all Emfuleni communities on arbitrary mismanagement of service delivery and power cut-offs, due to inflated and estimate billing.
