City Power is pleading with residents to refrain from tampering with electricity infrastructure, including bypassing meters, vandalism and illegal connections that may lead to the circuit malfunctioning.
This after a house caught fire post-loadshedding in Riverlea, Johannesburg at the weekend.
A resident of the house Natasha Bennett said: “I am 57-year-old disabled women, I suffer from epilepsy and neurological muscle and nerve disorder.
“Myself, children and their friends had been trying to get hold of City Power since Monday with no response to log a complaint about my meter box to be removed so that I can have my place rewired and repaired.”
Bennett detailed a difficult process to reach City Power.
“When one phones, you wait in a queue for almost an hour, I feel so dispensed but I pray to God that it will be sorted out soon.”
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said: “We were not aware of this incident as it was not reported to us. Thankful this [media query] has now brought [the matter] to our attention.
“The Hursthill service delivery centre team confirmed that based on the address provided to us, the customer’s meter was not vending, and that the last time electricity was bought was in 2019, suggesting that the meter may have been tampered with.”
Mangena requested communities to stop illegal connections by paying people to work on the power utility’s networks.
“This is not only illegal in terms of the law, but also dangerous and interferes with the functioning of our circuit, and customers may start experiencing power surges and equipment shocking them. We also encourage customers to test their earth-leakage devices regularly.”
He sympathized with the customer for the loss of property and belongings.
“The incident is unfortunate and we sympathize with the customer for their loss of property and belongings. We urge customers to call City Power in order to dispatch a team if they have a faulty, bypassed or malfunctioning meter.”
He said an investigation will be launched to probe the cause of the fire.
In March, City Power rolled out a programme to replace obsolete, faulty, bypassed meters at no cost to customers ahead of the token identifiers (TID) rollover project, he said.
“This programme will continue to be conducted in phases to audit and normalise meters across the seven regions in the City of Joburg, with other areas to be visited in the coming months.
“Customers will be notified of the dates through communication with their local councillors, community outreach programmes, and in the local media.”
He explained why the non-smart meters should be replaced.
“The TID resetting entails that every non-smart [old technology] meter should be replaced with the new technology meters, as these old technology meters will stop accepting the credit tokens by November 2024, as the credit token will run out of available numbers.
“While this will, for now, be done for free, we will in future disconnect any customer found to have tempered with the newly installed meters or refused to reset the meter for TID compliance.
“Customers will then be charged a reconnection fee and recovery for the period of the loss.”
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa.
