No word from Eskom yet

There is still no word on the discussions about the owed municipal debt.

The power utility has threatened to flick the switch on the municipality from January 23.

“We have submitted our proposals on payment arrangements. The Provincial Government is also assisting in this regard. At this stage discussions are at a sensitive stage,” said Municipal Manager Mr Theo van Vuuren.

The municipality just can’t close the gap between what they are billed by Eskom and what they receive from their business and residential customers.

“There is currently a gap of 40% between what we are billed and what we receive to pay those bills. The process to move to a point of balance has started years ago but is slow and requires in many instances funding, which we do not have,” said Van Vuuren.

The municipality is hard at work trying to implement initiatives to try and balance the scale.

“The key initiatives are in various stages of implementation which with cooperation from all will take us to a medium term sustainable position.”

In the last stretch of 2016 a new prepaid system was introduced.
This will improve on the management of the system as well as dealing with leakages where meters have been bypassed. This system will start showing results from this month.

It is estimated that up to 30% of the municipal area still has no electricity meters. R8-million was secured and a project was kick started to roll out meters where no meters were installed and replace other meters. It is forecasted that this project will be completed in this year.

Illegal connections are also one of the focus points. In these areas where high levels of illegal connections are occurring smart meters and a protective structure system are in the pipeline, this programme with assistance from the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) and Anglo American has been rolled out.

An estimated 26 000 households in all areas of the municipality have never been linked to the billing system. Following the data cleansing exercise and increased staff at the revenue section, these areas will be brought onto the system.

Van Vuuren said bringing areas which are formalised and consuming services but not on the billing system into the revenue net is of the utmost importance. This process must also be completed in this year.
There is no mercy from the municipality’s side as can be seen with their cut off initiative and improved credit control measures.

“Since the appointment with a new cut off and monitoring company in November we are already seeing a vast improvement in payments. This process has been rolled out in phases and will become the standard. We are also taking steps against those who have been bribing officials to ensure that their names never appear on the cut off lists as well as those who illegally reconnect themselves,” Van Vuuren said

He said they are holding back the appointment of a debt collection company who will, through legal processes, attach properties where people are failing to pay.

“I trust that on a voluntary and or cooperative manner we can prevent large scale legal actions against people. However, if progress is not sufficient, we will appoint the company in the near future.”

The appointment of new meter reading companies who will be doing onsite billing will also assist in reducing the many billing problems and bring more integrity back into the system.

The municipality is also launching two community awareness and billing correcting initiatives soon in areas where payment rates are low.

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