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City Power says customers across the City of Johannesburg owe R7.9 billion in electricity debt, with the majority of these in the inner city.
City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava was on Wednesday joined by the City of Joburg mayor Thapelo Amad on a drive to recover revenue debt in Roodepoort.
The campaign targeted defaulting and non-paying customers, those with bypassed meters and illegal connections.
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City Power is owed in excess of R1.2 billion by the customers in Roodepoort alone, which include businesses, government departments, and residential customers.
At least R10m was recovered on Wednesday, with half the amount paid by the Department of Education for a school that had a defaulting account, said City Power.
Several businesses also paid when they heard City Power was coming to disconnect, it said.
“We’re happy with customers who do the right thing and paid their accounts. We are, however, worried that they had to wait until we came knocking before they settled their debts. It goes to show that most of these customers have money and can service their debts but they elect not to,” said Mashava.
Mashava said City Power was disconnecting power supply as a last resort for customers who failed to pay for services.
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“We give them an opportunity to pay, but as a last resort we have no choice but to disconnect businesses, government institutions and residential households.”
Since November 2022 when the campaign started, City Power has collected about R3.8bn from defaulting customers.
Mashava said City Power will intensify the revenue collection campaign to enable the entity to meet its core objective of providing reliable power supply, infrastructure maintenance and procure stock material which has been running out due to the higher stages of load shedding.
Customers are urged to come forward and fix their accounts, pay their debts or make arrangements.