School threatened with power cuts

“I know we have to pay for electricity and will have to wait and see exactly what costs are involved. I just hope there are no hidden costs included in the tariffs,” he said.

Hoërskool Menlo Park refused to adhere to the Tshwane’s demand, threatening to take the metro to court should the school’s electricity supply be disrupted.

Deputy-principal Manie Geldenhuys said the school’s electricity and other services’ accounts were fully paid and up to date and that the metro therefore had no right to cut the power.

“Before they could force such a decision on schools, the matter must the discussed and debated with the education department,” Geldenhuys said.

After receiving the emailed threat from the municipality, he told the metro he would seek a legal remedy to the situation. He said he had not heard from Tshwane again since then.

Some schools, who did not want to be identified, said they believed the ‘administration fee’ charged was a commission paid to a private third party to administer the schools’ pre-paid system.

Tshwane metro failed to respond to repeated inquiries about the matter, but spokesman Lindela Mashigo was quoted earlier as saying the initiative was the first step in a new direction Tshwane had decided upon to collect fees.

He was reported as saying that pre-paid metering would be applicable to all businesses and residents of the metro in the future and that it had been started with larger organisations a while ago.

“Schools are part of the bigger electricity users,” Mashigo was reported as saying, adding this would put the onus on consumers to manage their own power use.

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