Some of Westdene’s residents are incensed by an alleged electricity scam targeting the neighbourhood.
Inhabitants of Maldon Avenue on the border of Westdene and Melville claim that scammers pretending to be from City Power, visit their homes threatening to cut off their power supply – even if they’re paid up.
“The first time it happened, two guys arrived at my gate, looking quite officious,” Maldon Avenue resident Estelle Lötter said on 20 June.
“They wanted to see my meter. I said, ‘What for?’ ”
The men told Lötter that they were checking smart meters. They also threatened to disconnect her property’s electricity if she did not comply.
“I asked them for their IDs because they weren’t wearing badges. One guy fetched his ID – and the photograph on the ID wasn’t even a picture of him! It was a photograph of a much older man. So I put up a fight and said I would call Joburg Connect,” she recounted.
Her neighbour – who wanted to remain anonymous – said that the circumstances surrounding these visits were fishy. “The guys who arrived at my house were wearing old uniforms, had old ID cards and their disconnection notices had old letterheads,” she said.
The men allegedly targeted at least eight of the neighbouring houses in the street, threatening to cut off the power if residents did not allow them entry.
“Subcontractors arrived again demanding to see my meter. I showed them my paid-up receipt. They were insistent that they had to see my meter so I went and took a photograph of it and showed it to them through the gate,” Lötter said.
“They said they were entitled to cut me off because they don’t have access to my property to do an ‘audit.’ All this, and I’m fully paid up.”
Her neighbour said that she had started pinning her paid up bills to her gate in an effort to prevent the alleged scammers from demanding entrance, but that it hadn’t been an effective deterrent, yet.
“Westdene gets targeted because it’s constantly losing power due to cable thefts and power surges,” Lötter suggested.
“We’re also on different grids in Maldon Street and these crooks take advantage of that. They don’t have a right to bully us like this. I won’t pay for unsupervised crime. Show them photographs of your meters, don’t let them in.”
City Power spokesperson Sydney Mphahlele said in response,”City Power is experiencing a high number of theft and vandalism of the electricity network in this area causing outages.”
The issue was also addressed by the Westdene Resident’s Association in June. A City Power representative told residents that Security Risk Control provides identity cards for all meter readers to show residents, and that the information on the companies’ contracted by City Power could not be provided to other parties.
