Pretoria - As the City of Tshwane kick-starts a drive to recoup R17 billion from defaulting customers this week, it also announced outreach campaigns to encourage residents with arrears on municipal accounts to settle their debts.
From March 1, the City implemented strict credit control measures, which included disconnecting conventional meters and blocking pre-paid meters for defaulting customers.
Meters for pre-paid clients would be blocked in such a way that it would allow people to purchase electricity tokens.
However, at least 60% of the purchase amount would be deducted by the municipality, and the remaining 40% would go towards the electricity tokens.
The same debits would be repeated for all subsequent purchases until the debt has been settled in full, according to the municipality.
The City also said it would embark on a revenue customer education outreach programme throughout the seven regions, to assist customers with accounts queries.
Municipal spokesperson Selby Bokaba said the programme would take place over the next seven weeks.
"The City of Tshwane encourages all its customers to continue paying their municipal accounts on time and in full to enable it to continue providing essential services," he said.
MMC for Finance Mare-Lise Fourie said the City's responsibility to maintain its infrastructure and render other services would be hampered by non-payment of municipal accounts.
Bokaba said: "We also appeal to customers who cannot pay their accounts in full to visit our customer care walk-in centres to make payment arrangements or to send payment arrangement requests to [email protected]."
Customers were encouraged to make payments by visiting www.tshwane.gov.za and click on the ‘E-Tshwane’ tab.
They can also make payments at the City’s pay points in their areas or at the City’s Easy Pay outlets, such as PnP, Shoprite and Checkers and Spar.
Pretoria News