About 10,000 residents of the City of Tshwane are stealing electricity while the city battles an electricity crisis, much like most metros in Gauteng.
Illegal connections, faulty meters and meter tampering cost the municipality R1.3bn during the 2021/2022 financial year.
The city's spokesperson, Sipho Stuurman, said they had a working strategy to deal with distribution losses, which stood at 19.44% with non-technical losses making up 12.44% of that total.
“Non-technical losses are tampering, illegal connection, stuck meters and they cost the city R1,376,428,654.00, which constitutes 64% of the total distribution losses.
“The remaining 36% are direct results of provision for electricity public lighting [such as] street lights and high masts and technical losses from emission in our networks, be it equipment during transportation and transformation of electricity to end users accounting for 7%,” he said.
On Thursday, finance MMC Peter Sutton announced an amnesty period for residents who had tampered with their electricity and water meters. Residents and businesses who have connected illegally to Tshwane’s grid have until September 30 to come forward or face fines of up to R200,000 per household or R10m for businesses.
Sutton said the purpose of the amnesty period was to assist residents and business owners who were guilty of illegally benefiting from these services without paying. This included those stealing electricity and water, paying bribes to remove outstanding amounts on accounts and paying bribes to illegally open a new municipal account without following the official process.
On Monday, Stuurman said 1,056,441 households were connected to the electrical grid with a backlog of 100,091 households.
“The city's data shows that on average during quarter four of last year, the electricity accounts estimated was 32%. This shows that there were multidimensional factors that lead to accounts not being read on time and estimated, and this should not be seen as people not buying electricity.”
Stuurman revealed that just over 10,500 customers were in the “no-buy” categories – meaning they had not bought electricity during the above period.
He said this was according to Tshwane’s vending system. Stuurman said an auditing process was now under way, adding that penalties would be imposed against those individuals.
“The city has a vending system that shows that over 60,000 customers are in 'low-buy' categories that are subjected to audit and penalties imposed. The city has strategies to audit these customers as part of energy losses management.
“The amnesty period is driven by a number of factors [such as] stuck meters, meter tampering, corruption and professional theft of electricity. Further, the amnesty is aimed at ensuring customers pay for services they consume. Furthermore, the amnesty seeks to ensure that those that are indigent are able to register and collect their free tokens for free basic electricity and to report any illegal operations in the network,” he said.
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