Sechaba ka’Nkosi
ESKOM has piled pressure on municipalities, who owe it more than R9 billion, to pay their debt or face a possibility of massive power cuts this winter. It has warned Soweto residents that they are next on its list.
Soweto, the country’s largest township with an estimated population of more than five million people, owes Eskom more than R4bn alone.
Eskom spokesman, Khulu Phasiwe, said only 180 000 Soweto households were supplied directly by Eskom, while the rest were serviced by the City of Johannesburg metropolitan council.
Phasiwe said Soweto was not being let off the hook and the households would have to pay their debt.
“What people need to know is that Soweto may be the biggest township in South Africa but that does not make it a municipality,” said Phasiwe.
“We are going after those (households) who owe us and there is no way people can simply consume electricity for free.”
Commentators believe that Soweto has largely been left on its own because it is a political hot potato for both Eskom and the government.
Backlash
Soweto residents fought an attempt by Eskom to implement prepaid meters in the township and have insisted on consuming electricity freely without any repercussions.
A top ANC leader told Business Report on Friday that the Soweto debt was not easy to deal with given the potential backlash that might follow if Eskom cut electricity due to non-payment.
The leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said:
“There is a deep-rooted culture of not paying in Soweto that needs to be dealt with in the first place,” he said.
“You have to convince the people that the government cannot afford to supply free electricity as other people are making residents believe. The government can only offer the 100 megawatts of free electricity it gives to everyone every month and nothing more.”
Last month, former Eskom board chairman Zola Tsotsi said the debt in Soweto needed a political solution to resolve.
Tsotsi said Eskom was trying to introduce new prepaid meters that cannot be bypassed or breached by electricity thieves, who cost the country an estimated R4.4bn annually.
“You need to get councillors and political leaders to work with Soweto residents in addressing the culture of non-payment,” Tsotsi told Business Report. “You can come with every measure but unless you get a political buy-in from the residents, those measures would not work.”
On Wednesday Eskom announced it had entered into payment agreements with 10 of the 20 defaulting municipalities, which owe the utility for non-payment of bulk electricity supply. Last month, Eskom said it would cut power to the top 20 defaulting municipalities from June 5.
Eskom said the municipalities had paid R54 million of the debt and have entered into an agreement on how the rest of the money would be paid.
Pay your debt
Eskom’s acting chief executive Brian Molefe warned the remaining municipalities – who are mostly in Mpumalanga and the Free State ,with a combined population of about two million people between them – that they could face interrupted power supplies if they did not pay for their debt.
“Eskom has reached a point where it can no longer continue to provide power without receiving payment in return,” said Molefe.
“Eskom is working closely with the relevant national and provincial departments through local, national and (Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa’s) war room structures to manage the municipal financial recovery process and we believe the work being done with these structures will yield positive results.”
Two of the municipalities, Msukaligwa in Mpumalanga and Matjabeng in the Free State said they could not comment as they were conducting their negotiations with Eskom through the SA National Local Government Association (Salga).
Salga in its part said its meetings with Eskom, municipalities, the treasury and the department of co-operative government and traditional affairs were continuing to ensure that the threatened interrupted electricity supplies do not happen.
Salga’s executive director for municipal infrastructure services, Jean de la Harpe, said most of the affected municipalities haf entered into payment agreements with Eskom.
“In particular municipalities are being encouraged to implement their debt control measures so that they can recover the arrears from government departments, businesses and households,” said De la Harpe.
“Further advice and support will also be given to those municipalities where the amount they bill for electricity, is lower than the cost of the electricity (amount billed by Eskom).”