Joburg City slams Eskom move to cut off power to Soweto
THE City of Johannesburg has condemned Eskom’s decision to unexpectedly disconnect Soweto residents’ power on Friday.
The city and the power utility have recently been at odds with Orlando West residents over their refusal to accept a prepaid meter system‚ which helps the metro manage power consumption.
Last week, Orlando residents protested against the prepaid system‚ demanding a flat monthly rate.
Eskom shot down this demand last week‚ saying it needed to recover the more than R4-billion that the township owed the utility.
However‚ in a strongly-worded statement‚ the city seems to have sympathised with its residents in the township‚ slamming Eskom for cutting power there without a warning.
“The decision to leave the entire Soweto without power for such a long time with no prior warning was insensitive‚ especially to those residents who pay for the electricity they consume,” it said.
“What exacerbated this was the deafening silence and indifference on the part of Eskom‚ which showed complete and utter disregard to the people of Soweto.”
The city also pointed out that it had been using power from Kelvin power station‚ a load-limiting mechanism and a time-of-use tariff to mitigate the risk to load-shedding in households served by the city’s power utility‚ City Power.
“Load-limiting enables the utility to monitor household usage in real time and disconnects residents that exceed the set threshold.
“Time of use is a dynamic tariff model that prices electricity more cost effectively during off-peak periods to encourage usage during this time‚ and prices it at a premium during peak periods to discourage consumption‚” it said.
Eskom spokesman Khulu Phasiwe said allowing Orlando West residents to pay a flat rate would be inconsistent with what the rest of the country paid.
He said the system was being implemented in other Soweto townships with no resistance.
He insisted that the utility had to make an effort to recover what was owed to it and that failing to do so would be in contravention of the Public Finance Management Act.