Additional load shedding for Govan Mbeki Municipality is inevitable.
According to Mr Benzi Soko, municipal spokesman, this is not because the municipality cannot pay its debt to Eskom, but because certain towns consume too much electricity.
“Eskom is throttling electricity power supply in GMM due to the fact that (we are) exceeding the agreed demand level as per the contract between the municipality and Eskom (and this) impacts negatively on the Eskom network infrastructure.
“Such consumption is not catered for by Eskom and it puts a strain on their equipment that reduces the equipment’s life span.
“As a result, Eskom cannot afford to continuously make such power supply capacity available to customers exceeding their agreed consumption level since it also has capacity constraints.”
The municipal manager, Mr Felani Mndebele published a notice on the Govan Mbeki Municipality’s social media page on 12 February to inform residents from Bethal, eMzinoni, Kinross and Evander that they can expect partial rotational load shedding in addition to the Eskom load shedding.
He said the reason for this was that the consumption in these areas exceeds the notified maximum demand (NMD) of which the limit was agreed upon in a contract with Eskom.
Although eMbalenhle is mentioned as one of the towns where the demand is exceeded, it is not counted among the latest towns that will have to endure an additional hour of load shedding per day after Eskom’s load shedding finishes.
Mr Soko said, however, eMbalenhle has not been omitted as residents are already coping with this partial load shedding.
“eMbalenhle was the first town to be limited before all the other areas. Load shedding has been affecting eMbalenhle for long, because of these limitations.”
GMM has in the meantime applied to Eskom to upgrade the NMD in these areas, but according to Mr Soko, the partial rotational load shedding will be implemented until the upgrade is done.
Mr Soko said schedules and how this additional load shedding will work, will depend on Eskom.
According to Mr Soko this is not another threat from Eskom that electricity supply will be cut due to non-payment.
“The department hasn’t received any notification to residents about additional outages to be imposed as a result of non-payment by Council. GMM is a licensed municipality in terms of electrical power distribution and therefore no entity, including Eskom can communicate to its residents directly,” claimed Mr Soko.
Ms Juanita Vogel, spokesman for Eskom, said Eskom cannot comment on this issue. She referred Ridge Times to the municipality.
The DA’s Ms Mariaan Chamberlain, councillor, said that in principle the DA believes that GMM does not implement the policies currently in place to generate income.
“Residents who do not pay are not brought to book to pay their accounts. Some owe the municipality up to R1 million or more, but no measures have been taken against them.”
Ms Aranda Nel-Buitendag, councillor of the Freedom Front Plus, said the electricity supply limit was lowered because the municipality is not keeping to its repayment agreement with Eskom.
“The debt collection actions are also pathetic. Some businesses, especially in Evander, are months in arrears and have yet not been cut off.”
Ms Nel-Buitendag said Govan Mbeki Municipality is heading the same way as Dipaliseng where different communities are now protesting together against poor service delivery.
She said the throttling of electricity will also affect the water supply to towns such as Bethal even more, because pumps will not be fully operational.
