Indigent residents will also be afforded indigent relief for the next six months until all applications have been dealt with on merit.

Furthermore, council resolved during the two hour emergency council sitting, that ward councilors will collect account information from individuals in their wards to address each query.

Locals, in some instances have been billed more than 300% on their accounts from January to June.

Council and the municipality is aware of billing problems, they say, have to be addressed individually.

The meeting descended into chaos once again when the ANC refused to entertain a proposal from the DA, supported by the EFF, to extend open electricity availability.

Following a short caucus by the ANC, Mayor Diphala Motsepe agreed on a 30 day extension, which would have been initially granted till September 7. The ANC argued that the decision to open electricity sales would be reviewed every month for the next six months.

Opposition parties however wanted unrestricted electricity sales over six months, to run concurrent with the six months deadline to address individual accounts.

Almost the entire ANC caucus, apart from Speaker Andries Mabena, Mayor Motsepe and members of the mayoral committee, abruptly left the meeting dissolving the quorum.

The EFF threatened to take the ANC to court for dissolving the meeting before a resolution could be finalized. Both the DA and EFF however later agreed to the mayor’s terms.

According to the new resolution the December 2020 decision to wipe the indigent list have been rescinded and electricity purchases is now open to all despite municipal debts.

The meeting was called and the resolution taken in order to halt ongoing riots, which started on Monday, due to tariff increases and data cleansing, resulting in indigent residents having to re-apply despite Covid-19 challenges.