No license if you owe on your service account

Vehicle owners are in for a huge surprise if they want to renew their licenses. As from December 1 no motor licenses will be issued unless municipal accounts are in order.

The Emalahleni Local Municipality in consultation with Eskom has accelerated their attempts to bring this situation to a point of sustainability and to recover from the increased arrears account following the high winter billing period.

A request was also made to the public to support these initiatives by servicing their accounts. But according to the municipality, this fell on deaf ears.

“We communicated the problematic situation in respect of a mismatch between the cost of electricity bought from Eskom and what is recovered from consumers in Emalahleni. Not much voluntary support over the past month was forthcoming and the start of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) process by Eskom is inevitable any day now. This provides us with approximately two months to make a meaningful change to the current situation,” said Mr Lebohang Mofokeng, municipal spokesperson.

He once again underlined the urgency of the debt to Eskom matter and said,

“Although the initiatives such as audits, installation of meters, aggressive debt collection, are being implemented, a real change in our community’s view on electricity consumption and payments are needed urgently. The number of threats of protest and counter reaction where cut offs are done or planned is a matter of concern. The continued first reaction by big debtors to stall payments by declaring disputes and rather to pay lawyers than to pay their accounts is an equal concern. Communication on social media and opinions expressed by some, suggest an attitude that paying for electricity is only the municipality’s problem, and not one affecting all.”

It is clear that Eskom’s patience is running thin and a long term solution needs to be found urgently.

The Eskom debt is draining the municipal coffers and that makes tending to service delivery an impossible task.
Some of the drastic steps the municipality is now taking includes delivering 20 000 final reminders to residents with arrear accounts. This process has been ongoing for two weeks and will be concluded within a week from now.
The first mass cutoff programme in areas that have ignored these notices started on November 22 and will progressively be rolled out.

An estimated 15 000 and more unregistered users will be added to the billing system.

The municipality is also looking into an onsite billing method. They will be testing this from early next year.

“As from December the new customer centre will be in use and we hope that by January this will create a much more efficient system for account inquiries and corrections. By March a further 2 000 households will be formally serviced and electrical accounts opened. By June we should have brought most of the current unregistered consumers into the revenue net,” said Mofokeng.

Mr Theo van Vuuren, municipal manager previously said should the current initiatives and the municipality’s request to the public to service their current accounts, and part of their arrears not be successful this municipality may face formal cut off notices from Eskom and final bulk supply interruptions of up to eight hours a day towards the end of January.

Speaking to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on public enterprises on Wednesday‚ August 31 former Eskom Chief Executive Officer Brian Molefe said, municipalities across the country still owe Eskom R27-billion for electricity.

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