In a bid to recoup over R1.2b owed to the Reuven Service Delivery Centre alone, City Power, joined by Joburg Water and other city departments, has disconnected customers in Naturena who owe a combined R5m.

Naturena in its entirety has an outstanding debt of over R309m with the City of Joburg.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena says in the past three years, it has lost around R90m from customers who have bypassed their meters in Naturena.

“We have about 3 000 prepaid customers in that area and only half are paying their electricity. The rest have bypassed their meters.

“During the cut-off operation, backed by the SAPS and the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department, we also removed some of the electricity infrastructure to avoid having recurring cases of illegal connections.

“In Malta Street, we were forced to switch off the whole street block due to its historically low levels of vending, and the homeowners – one of whom owes City Power R267 000 – refused our technicians [entry into] their properties during the operation. We won’t hesitate to do the same in other sections of Naturena, which will unfortunately affect some of the paying customers,” he says.

(WATCH) City Power thanks the residents of Naturena who reached out about their accounts, and expressed desire to have smart prepaid meters installed in their homes.

City Power Spokesperson Isaac Mangena urges residents to do the right thing.#JourgUpdates #CityPowerUpdates… pic.twitter.com/qSz8A9kVIF

— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) September 20, 2023

During the operation, City Power officials were met by disgruntled residents, who claimed that they were not properly engaged in the need for them to pay for their electricity consumption.

“As City Power, we have engaged with the community of Naturena on numerous occasions in the past 10 years.

“In one of the meetings held in April, the same community raised their objections about paying for poor quality services, requesting that their electricity infrastructure be normalised and something be done about the rampant cable theft incidents in the area.

“Following that engagement, City Power spent over R9m fixing the cable theft problem and work was underway to normalise the network, which included the installation of prepaid meters.

“The agreement with this affluent community was that once the cable theft crisis was dealt with, they would allow our teams to install meters and then start paying for services. Today’s operation was the first in a series of cut-offs that will be carried out to enforce payment of services.

“We urge those who were cut off to visit the City of Joburg offices to fix their accounts and start paying for services to avoid being disconnected. We wish to thank all customers in the area who are paying for their services.

“Security of supply is increasingly being compromised by those who are not paying for services, which will in future make it difficult for City Power to attend to the outage calls from Naturena,” he says.

[PICTURES] An eventful day in Naturena, South of Johannesburg, as City Power conducted its disconnection drive in the area. TCG pic.twitter.com/68Lo7D0EeQ

— EWN Reporter (@ewnreporter) September 19, 2023