LIMPOPO – Greater Giyani Mayor Thandi Zitha has urged residents to stop illegal electricity connections and purchase electricity legally, warning that electricity theft contributes to poor service delivery, prolonged outages and lost employment opportunities.

Speaking during the Greater Giyani mayoral imbizo at Nkuri Zamani village outside Giyani on Friday, Zitha said many residents blamed the municipality for electricity-related problems despite electricity supply falling under Eskom’s responsibility.

“You must understand that the issue of load reduction is a self-inflicted problem because some of you do not buy electricity,” she said.

Eskom’s blunt response after truck crash

To illustrate the impact of electricity theft, Zitha shared an incident that occurred in the Dzumeri area a day before the imbizo. She said residents had reported that a truck had crashed into an electricity pole, damaging power lines and leaving the community without electricity.

After being alerted to the outage, she contacted an Eskom manager to enquire when repair teams would be dispatched. According to Zitha, the response from Eskom was unexpected.

“The manager told me straightforwardly that they were not coming anytime soon because the people in the area do not buy electricity,” she said.

She said the Eskom official informed her that the utility’s system indicated widespread non-purchase of electricity in the area and that when officials attempted to audit electricity meters, some residents locked their homes and left to avoid inspections.

“Eskom says if a community does not buy electricity, and it happens that one person has a fault that requires them to come and fix, they could take even three months without attending to the problem when their system tells them that you do not buy electricity,” she said.

Illegal connections cost jobs

Zitha argued that illegal electricity connections ultimately harm communities rather than benefit them.

“You may think that not buying electricity saves you money, but remember that you are killing your own economy,” she warned.

“We have many young people who are unemployed and looking for jobs. If you bought electricity, some of these youth would be employed by Eskom because more jobs would be created,” said the mayor.

She added that if communities consistently paid for electricity, Eskom would have greater capacity to expand its operations and possibly establish satellite offices closer to residents, creating employment opportunities for local young people.

“However, if you continue not to buy electricity, we will continue to have the challenge of load reduction and unemployment. So it is very simple: to end load reduction, we must buy electricity,” she urged residents.

Call to traditional leaders

She concluded her address by urging traditional leaders to involve the municipality whenever they demarcate new residential sites, saying this enables the municipality to plan and budget for essential services.

“Informing us about these new settlements helps us budget for the services those communities will need,” she said.