Pretoria - Power has been disconnected to an unprecedented 8 000 account holders in arrears with a combined debt of R130 million owed to the City of Tshwane.
But since the City of Tshwane embarked on this vigorous revenue collection drive a fortnight ago, including cutting power, customers have been keen to pay all or part of what they owe to have their power restored.
Tshwane spokesman Selby Bokaba said that in this time, the city had already collected R883m from defaulting customers.
City manager Jason Ngobeni said people were now coming forward in droves to settle.
On Friday, the municipality disconnected and then restored the electricity supply to the Madibeng Local Municipality (Brits) after it made a payment of R15.2m for bulk services supplied by the city.
Madibeng had failed to honour its municipal debt of more than R48m.
The city is the bulk supplier of electricity and water to various municipalities, including this council in North West.
Ngobeni said the reconnection of Madibeng was based on strict terms that its account would be settled in full.
“We have agreed with Madibeng that monthly payments should be made and ultimately the account be paid in full to avoid future disconnections. After the latest payment, the municipality’s balance is more than R33m,” Ngobeni said.
Two weeks ago, Ngobeni announced the city’s drastic course of action to disconnect services to all accounts that were in arrears in a bid to recover R6.5 billion in outstanding debt.
These included schools, government departments and utilities, embassies as well as businesses and private homes.
However, the Gauteng Department of Education has since made the payment and power supply was restored to schools.
Ngobeni said the city’s finance offices were bursting at the seams with customers frantically coming forward to make payments.
“We are not yet where we want to be, but we are gradually getting there. We are upping the ante and soon we will increase the number of daily disconnections to show that we mean business,” he added.
There are various ways of getting information about municipal accounts: These are:
*Register online on eTshwane
* Submit cellphone details to receive your account via SMS
Pretoria News