Following a court order by the Pretoria High Court in July this year, large industrial electricity consumers in the Emfuleni Local Municipality (ELM) are now paying their electricity bills directly to Eskom.
The court order made provision for a two-stage approach for Eskom’s takeover of the Emfuleni Municipality’s electricity business with the first being a direct payment regime by the top customers within ELM. The second is the signing of a distribution agency agreement whereby Eskom will take over and manage the municipal electricity business.
In terms of the first process Eskom could immediately start collecting the monthly electricity portion from large consumers as well as all other consumers who wish to pay Eskom directly.
With the assistance of the Golden Triangle Chamber of Commerce (GTCoC) and Business in general, the power utility collected R195 million from municipal consumers in the first month of implementation.
The GTCoC aims to include all large electricity users in Emfuleni in order for businesses to take advantage of the court order. A list of such users was received from ELM but unfortunately it only reflects registered business names. Should any business not be trading under the business name registered on their Emfuleni account, the GTCoC has no means of getting in contact with them.
Businesses that have not yet received correspondence from the Chamber in this regard are kindly requested to send an email with their details to Chamber Secretary Sandy du Toit at admin@gtcoc.co.za should they wish to be part of this arrangement.