Pre-paid water on cards for Tshwane
While the Tshwane metro on Wednesday disclosed that no penalty would by payable for the cancellation of its contract with PEU for the installation and running of the city’s smart electricity meter system, it said it was considering prepaid water meters for all.
The Tshwane metro will not have to pay any penalty for cancelling its multi-billion rand contract with PEU Capital for the installation and running of the municipality’s smart prepaid electricity system.
At the same time, Tshwane mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa said there would be no disruption in services for the around 14 000 customers who had PEU smart prepaid meters installed over the past two years.
Ramokgopa told reporters on Wednesday the city would continue with the roll-out of smart electricity meters once a new service provider was appointed.
“We are also seriously considering the installation of prepaid water meters for all households, businesses and other consumers in the metro,” the mayor said.
PEU would continue handling the operations of the system while Tshwane called for potential service providers to tender to take over all PEU’s infrastructure, services and the smart meters already installed.
Under the initial agreement between Tshwane and PEU, PEU would have been paid 19 and-a-half cents for every rand of electricity bought by smart prepaid meter users for running and administrating the entire system, while installing smart meters to some 900 000 users in the metro.
No more meters will be installed by PEU and from 1 July, the company will be paid 9 and-a-half cents in the rand for keeping the system going. Once a new service provider is announced – which should be within 6 months – the new contractor will take over the running of the smart meter system in the metro and PEU will receive no further payment.
PEU will, however, continue to install customer interface units where smart meters are already installed.
The new service provider will also have to buy the infrastructure installed, including the smart meters, from PEU.
The mayor said the original intent of appointing PEU to provide smart meter services had been a bold, but legal and lawful gesture to speedily install the smart prepaid solution to enable automated meter reading, data management, data processing and analysis.
“The objectives were to drastically improve revenue collection on a cash upfront basis, improve collection efficiency of electricity charges as well as other services and to reduce energy theft through meter-bypassing,” Ramokgopa said.
He acknowledged there had been glitches that slowed down the project, but said the critical disruption of the roll-out (between 800 000 and 900 000 meters in two years) came from protracted legal challenges by AfriSake with the support of opposition parties.
“They were hell-bent on stalling any major ground-breaking project initiated by the city’s administration, including the smart meter project,” the mayor said.
“These detractors of our transformation agenda have gone to the extent of manufacturing lies over this innovative smart metering project and today we once again expose such right-wing opportunism and immature political disorder.”
Ramokgopa said entering into a contract with PEU was not merely a case of buying prepaid meters, but rather a financial solution which included PEU’s intellectual property and expertise.
Tshwane and AfriSake are still embroiled in a court battle over the PEU issue and at Wednesday’s news briefing, a representative of AfriSake was not allowed to ask any questions.
“Ask your questions though your lawyers and through the judge,” Ramokgopa said.
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