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An Eskom prepaid electricity meter box.
Residents around the City of Mbombela, Mpumalanga, are pleading with the power utility, Eskom, to assist them in upgrading their electricity meters.
Long queues have formed outside the Eskom offices as customers seek help to recode their meter boxes. Eskom announced an extension of the deadline for prepaid meter upgrades for zero-buyer customers.
Initially, the deadline for meter recording was Sunday. Customers are required to upgrade their meters to be compliant with Eskom’s Key Revision Number 2 (KRN2).
Some residents report that they’ve been slapped with fines for tampering with their meters.
An Eskom customer says, “I bought an electricity token but I couldn’t load it. I came here and they said I should come back today in the morning. I have been here from 5 am but still I am yet to be assisted. When we ask questions, they say the system is down and they are unable to assist us with our meters for them to accept the token. We’re paying money to come here. We tried to be on time today but still we not getting assisted.”
Another customer says, “We don’t have a problem with these meter changes, but then the main problem here is that most people are unemployed, and they won’t afford to pay those R6 000 that they have to pay here at Eskom.”
Soweto residents continue to queue outside Eskom offices to fix their electricity meters. Calvin Dludla speaks to some community members . #TheAgenda pic.twitter.com/GYMRZJO9tJ
— SABC News (@SABCNews) November 25, 2024
Furthermore, the City of Polokwane says it has issued fines to customers who were found to have bypassed their electric meters during the process of re-coding prepaid electricity meters.
City spokesperson, Thipa Selala says only 2% of municipal electricity clients are yet to be registered.
Selala says most of the outstanding meters belong to clients who could not be located at their registered properties.
“All meters purchasing electricity from us are fully compliant representing 98% of the total installed meters so the remaining 2% could not be located on the respective properties and could not be used for electricity purchases at the municipality. Those that have bridged the electricity we have also converted those meters they are now fully compliant what is going to happen now is that the municipality has issued fines and penalties that they need to pay.”
Prepaid Meters | Long queues in Soweto as Eskom systems experience technical glitches:
