The Govan Mbeki Municipality’s executive mayor, Nhlakanipho Zuma, said the municipality’s biggest problem is not being able to supply the whole of eMbalenhle with 34MVA electricity.
An extra 20MVA has been acquired from Eskom but they are still unable to minimise load reduction.
Zuma said the municipality owes Eskom R2,9b and Eskom can switch off the lights if the municipality does not take action to encourage residents to buy electricity, rather than steal it.
“34 % of the community buy electricity, while 66% steal it through illegal connections,” Zuma said.
“We can pay off that R2,9b in less than three years if we stop prioritising less important things and prioritise electricity because it keeps our lives going.
“Everything we do, depends on electricity and we must take care of it as a community,” said Zuma.
Zuma said the municipality paid R27m for the mobile transformer and later paid Eskom R45m for the installation of a permanent transformer.
He said the company that will construct the structure for a permanent transformer has been appointed.
Zuma also said the mobile transformer operates on a prepaid system and if the municipality defaults in payment, Eskom immediately switches it off.
“We have investigated where are we losing too much electricity in eMbalenhle. We found that some of the contributing factors are illegal connections, straight connections and rental rooms.
“The municipality did strait connections to especially businesses because electricity metres were out of stock in our stores. We are currently fixing that as we are installing metres everywhere.
“Some residents have backyard rooms (to rent out). This is causing problems for the municipal electricity infrastructure.
“Those rooms are not zoned as businesses but as residential sites. It causes a problem for the municipality because of the high consumption of electricity,” said Zuma.
Zuma said a household that is supposed to consume 13kv, is then consuming 130kv and that is where control is needed and those stands need to be rezoned.
