Johannesburg Executive Mayor Dada Morero has told residents of Alexandra that the city’s most important task is to ensure every household has access to electricity, even as officials grapple with getting residents to pay for the power they use.

Speaking at City Power’s electricity imbizo, held at AlexSan Kopano on August 18, Morero stressed that the gathering was, among other things, meant to drive home the message that residents need to buy electricity.

Read more: City Power bleeds as only 4% of 40 000 customers in Alexandra pay for power

“It is very important for us as a municipality to make sure that people buy electricity because it will help us a lot going forward. The more we buy electricity, the more the municipality will be able to do other things.”

The electricity imbizo, the first in a series of similar engagements the city plans to roll out in different regions, brought together scores of residents to voice frustrations while giving officials a platform to explain measures aimed at ensuring a reliable and sustainable electricity network.

Residents expressed concerns about frequent outages, saying the network is unreliable. Discussions ranged widely, touching on recurring power cuts, network overloading, illegal connections, meter tampering, and, central to it all, non-payment for services.

The imbizo forms part of a broader push by City Power to shore up revenue collection, which has long undermined the utility’s finances. The entity has previously laid bare the scale of its losses on the Alexandra network specifically.

Also read: Councillor says Alexandra businesses must pay for electricity

City Power CEO Charles Tlouane previously said the utility spends roughly R250m a month supplying electricity through the Alexandra network, yet collects only about R29m in return—a recovery rate of just 11.6%, leaving a monthly shortfall of around R221m.

Tlouane conceded that the situation is unsustainable, and that City Power must simultaneously improve reliability of supply while closing the gap between what is consumed and what is actually paid for.

Deputy Mayor and MMC for Finance Loyiso Masuku called for a joint effort between residents and the city.

Also read: City Power stands firm on restoration and normalisation fee amid 6th and 7th Avenue outages

“Service delivery works best when communities work together with the government. Service delivery is something we must all collectively work for.”

Ward 76 resident Lizzy Sithole said the community was not opposed to paying, provided the city held up its end of the bargain. “The Alex community is not refusing to pay for electricity, but you must do the right thing. The electricity infrastructure is old. You must repair it.”

For some residents, the link between City Power’s revenue collection challenges and the state of Alexandra’s roads is not obvious. Morero revealed that the city cross-subsidises infrastructure repairs and development across the municipality using surpluses generated by entities such as City Power and Johannesburg Water.

“It is very important that we pay for electricity and water.”

He acknowledged the long list of grievances raised by residents, saying the city was capable of addressing them and committing to spending time in Alexandra this month to work through the issues raised at the imbizo.
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