A delegation led by the Executive Mayor, Lindiwe Ntshalintshali, met with Eskom officials in Nelspruit this morning.
Negotiations are ongoing but clearly Eskom is not willing to finding the middle ground on their threat to cut off power.
“Before end of this week we should have collected most of the R1,2-billion that is owed to Emalahleni Local Municipality to be able to settle the Eskom debt, failing which, power will be switched off,”
said Mr Kingdom Mabuza, spokesperson for the municipality.
He said the municipality is now making desperate attempts to get consumers to settle their accounts and started switching off power of consumers who are in arrears.
Ntshalintshali urged business and communities to pay for their services and help the municipality to get out of this situation as power cuts would affect a lot of operations.
In trying to encourage customers to bring arrear accounts in good standing, council has in terms of the credit policy, decided to enforce the following incentives: apply a 10% discount on current account payments if accounts are paid in full on or before the third of the month; on arrears of shorter than 90 days, waive interest plus 10% of the capital amount; on arrears of between 90 and 180 days waive interest plus 50% of capital; on arrears of older than 180 days waive interest plus 50% of capital; on partial payments of above 50% will only be considered for waiving of interest.
The capital discount is capped at R50 000, except in exceptional cases which further discounts can be negotiated.
