‘Recoding of prepaid meters causing unnecessary panic’

Residents of Diepkloof in Soweto queue in long lines for assistance with recoding of the prepaid electricity meters on 25 November 2024.

2 minutes

The Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC) has accused Eskom and government of creating unnecessary panic regarding the recoding of prepaid electricity meters.

Residents of Soweto started queuing outside Eskom service centres last week ahead of the meter update deadline, which was yesterday.

Eskom has extended the deadline for zero buyers with active meters until Friday, November 29.

Zero buyers refers to prepaid customers who have not been buying electricity either because they’ve bypassed their meters, connected illegally or have been purchasing from illegal vendors.

Eskom says zero buyers need to go to accredited vendors to purchase electricity tokens and bring the slips with them when they visit Eskom offices from today.

“This is avoidable chaos because it’s a technical issue – it should be simple to implement. But Eskom and the government authorities had mixed goals. Because on the one hand, they wanted to address the technical problem but on the other, they tried to also address financial problems of non-payment. As a result, they resorted to the old apartheid colonial top-down approach of threatening communities, creating an unnecessary crisis,” says SECC member Dr Trevor Ngwane.

Meanwhile, residents of Soweto in Diepkloof are back in long queues this morning in the aftermath of the scramble to avoid being cut off.