Centurion residents welcome pre-paid meter upgrade

The majority of Centurion residents welcomed the metro’s move to upgrade its current pre-paid meter systems.

“The current systems are often offline resulting in people not being able to buy any pre-paid electricity,” said resident Constant Swanevelder.

He said that in the past, there were problems with the system to buy tokens being offline for days at a time.

“That is not a problem right now. But I think most of the people who complain about the system, may have issues with a small part of the overall system, and that makes them negative about the entire system.”

He, however, said that he doesn’t believe the new system would curb illegal connections, adding that it would only irritate people who were trying to abide by the law.

“Criminals will still bypass the system, connect electricity illegally and sell tokens not provided by the municipality.

“The problem is that the root cause of the problem is not addressed, and that is the criminal elements in our society, failure of law, as well as lack of well-paid employees,” he said.

He said the only issue he had was that when the municipality owed money to customers, chances were very slim that they might get it back.

“I must also say that my issue with the subtracting of outstanding fees is when you have a legitimate reason with disputing an account.

“This way you are forced to pay even when you do not owe them any money. My experience is that when the municipality owes you money, you will not get it back.”

The Reeds resident Zingiswa Mndayi also welcomed the prepaid upgrade, saying that she hoped that the new system would not go offline as often as the current one.

“I hope the new system will be advanced, to a point where one won’t be billed too much for not consuming too much electricity like before.

“I believe the system will also curb the illegal connection because that has always been an issue in our area,” Mndayi added.

The metro’s planned upgrade is scheduled after Standard Transfer Specification Association (STSA) director Don Taylor said millions of meters were facing a crisis of non-functionality by 2024.

According to Tshwane utilities MMC Daryl Johnston, the updating of the prepaid meters was due to a standard requirement to update the base date to ensure that tokens continue to be accepted.

“Once our servers are updated, we will begin updating customers’ meters as part of a year-long project. We anticipate completing this process by the end of 2023.”

Johnston said the upgrade would ensure that the metro’s pre-paid meter project was completed soon, allowing customers to operate without any problems.

“We will also use this opportunity to revisit our pre-paid metering fleet as part of a revenue protection operation to check the functioning of all meters.”

The municipality’s decision to upgrade its systems was in line with Eskom’s electricity network infrastructure upgrade programme.

“The roll-out of the programme will begin with a consultation process with all stakeholders and community members,” Eskom said.

“These engagements will be conducted through various means such as meetings with the community leadership and community/public addresses.”

Ward 69 councillor Cindy Billson said the meter upgrade systems were mandatory, adding that residents weren’t allowed to prevent contractors from doing their jobs.

Billson said the upgrading process would be done in sections, as opposed to before when contractors were only prioritising residents who were not paying for services.

“I am not sure when the process will start, but I suspect they will start between May and June when they would start going from block to block. This is just a cheap method of doing it. Also, we need to cut off people who are not paying,” she added.

The total cost of the municipality’s pre-paid upgrade is an estimated R5.2-million.

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