Gert Sibande District Municipality’s mayor talks about power woes

Mr Muzi Chirwa, Gert Sibande District Mayor, and his delegation that includes Mr Nhlakanipho Zuma, Speaker for the Govan Mbeki Municipality, embarked on public consultation with locals about the intention to appoint a service provider to tackle the electricity crisis in the area.

The service provider will be responsible for the management, operation and maintenance of the electricity distribution network in eMzinoni and Bethal for a period of five years.

GMM and GSDM signed a memorandum of understanding in August that the district municipality will be an implementing agent for the management of electricity in the two areas.

The municipality has been struggling to supply and distribute electricity in the area and blamed Eskom for implementing the notified maximum demand (NMD) after GMM failed to honour its payment agreement.

Mr Chirwa told the residents the priority is to ring-fence the business by appointing a service provider (SP) that would inject seed capital and run the business for a period of five years under the supervision of the GSDM.

During the five-year period, the service provider will collect revenue, pay the monthly account to Eskom on behalf of the GMM, improve the state of the infrastructure by providing more reliable electricity supply to customers, improve the revenue collection and improve customer service.

The municipality has recently paid R95 million and R27 million upfront for eMzinoni and Bethal respectively.

Council approved a repayment plan which they submitted to Eskom. However, Eskom rejected the payment plan.

Locals took this opportunity to raise their concerns over the electricity problems in the area.

They told Mr Chirwa that almost every day there are power cuts in the area.

“This has resulted in violent protests.

“Power interruptions occur daily in this township and the councillors are not helping.”

They called on Mr Chirwa to deal with this matter once and for all.