City Power continued in their aggressive revenue collection on Friday, this time in the Randburg area.
This cut-off operation is targeted at customers, ranging from businesses that include a shopping centre, key customers, government institutions and residential customers, who owe the power utility thousands of rand.
This comes after City Power welcomed Wednesday’s court ruling, which dismissed a case against City Power by Sierra Hotel.
Sierra Hotel owes the power utility R26m since 2018 and has failed to meet the repayments agreements it made with the city.
The power utility has since disconnected the hotel’s electricity.
Spokesperson for City Power Isaac Mangena said: “The hotel took us to court on an urgent basis disputing the debt and the disconnection. However, the judge dismissed the applicant’s matter with costs.”
Mangena elaborated on the money owed to City Power: “City Power is owed R7.9bn in debt by customers across the city of Johannesburg.
“This is why we have launched an aggressive revenue collection drive to ensure we collect every cent from defaulting and non-paying customers. The first phase focuses on businesses, large power users, and government departments including schools and hospitals.
“We are currently running at a loss due to loadshedding, daily cable theft and vandalism that has rapidly increased.
“This means we have to spend extra money on maintenance, new material, paying our workers for overtime and meet up to expectations to electrify informal settlements.”
He ended the interview with a question, which he deems a great concern: “How then, are we going to meet these expectations and render our services if we don’t have revenue?”
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