Durban - eThekwini Municipality is calling on pastors and other individuals of moral authority to appeal to communities to pay for municipal services.
The city said it was concerned that there were people who could afford to pay for services like electricity, but were instead choosing to steal via illegal connections to the city’s network.
Such connections, said the city’s head of electricity Maxwell Mthembu, caused overloading of the network which often led to extensive damage that costs millions of rand to repair.
Mthembu was addressing the issue in the city’s podcast called eThekwini Matters.
He said the city was faced with the challenge of rampant thieving.
Mthembu described those people who could afford to pay for services but were deciding not to as “thieves”.
“We just need people to be (convinced) by the other people that they respect. Most people go to either the mosque, churches or temple or somewhere where they worship. We are calling on those people who are leaders of such organisations, who are respected by the people who are thieves.
“I am calling them thieves because they are stealing my product. I am asking (these leaders) to nicely talk to them.
“Those who read the bible know there are 10 commandments and one of the commandments is ”thou shall not steal”. It does not say ‘you must not steal except municipal services’. Please stop stealing,” he said.
Mthembu also spoke on the fact that the city had connected many people to the grid in the recent past.
“We discourage people from stealing electricity, please come forward and we will connect (you). When someone is stealing or illegally connecting to the network, they abuse, they are not like the normal customer who knows they are paying for that service.”
He said when they connected people to the network they found that the demand dropped because people stopped abusing the service as they would be paying for it.