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MANZINI – Electricity consumers can approach the Eswatini Energy Regulatory Authority (ESERA) in the event they have any grievance against Eswatini Electricity Company (EEC).
The authority’s General Manager Regulation Simphiwe Khumalo said this during a recent feedback session at The George Hotel, Manzini.
He was responding to consumers’ concerns that there were too many outages and the supplier at times took a while to attend to these faults.
“If you have reported something to EEC and exhausted all the channels with no solution, you can write an official complaint to the regulator,” Khumalo said.
Complaint
“You need to state the steps you have taken to resolve the issue and the complaint. The regulator will then look into the dispute or complaint.”
Khumalo said the regulator would approach EEC to find out what had been done to resolve the customer’s complaint.He said if the regulator was unsuccessful, there was the Energy Dispute Tribunal that handled such issues.
Lobamba Lomdzala resident Solomon Dlamini stated that electricity outages were resolved after a long time, in some instances, even after food had been spoilt in refrigerators.
“We experience long electricity outages yet we are made to pay high tariffs. We sometimes live without electricity for three days,” he lamented.
Manzini businessman John Horton wanted to know the role of the regulator in determining EEC’s financial performance. “As a regulator, do you just take what EEC presents or you have a way to determine if it is authentic?” he asked.
Khumalo mentioned that EEC would now be expected to submit these on time for stakeholders to read, interrogate and make meaningful inputs during public hearings.
He encouraged consumers to read the Tariff Order and Public Hearings Report to understand and appreciate the tariff process.
The reports are available on the regulator’s website