Eskom: No more Mr Nice Guy

ESKOM said on Friday that it had finally had enough of municipalities not paying it for power, and warned it will cut off the supply to 20 of them with 3.8 million residents over unpaid bills of R3.6-billion.

The utility is battling to find enough electricity to keep the lights on while struggling to plug a R225billion gap in funding it needs to build and maintain new power stations.

Now it says that from June — the middle of winter — it will cut power during peak times for up to eight hours a day during the week and six hours a day on weekends.

This will affect large swathes of the population, including towns such as Witbank, Secunda, Klerksdorp and Randfontein.

However, the power cuts will also affect those who might have paid their bills. Eskom said it will cut off supply to municipalities directly and can’t discriminate between paying and non-paying customers,

“A lot of people will sit without power even after they’ve paid their bills,” said Francois Botha, a councilor from the opposition Democratic Alliance party in Matjhabeng municipality in the Free State, which has about 400 000 residents and is one of those that may be affected.

Eskom said it “recognises that the disconnection of the electricity supply might cause undue hardship to consumers and members of the community, and might adversely affect the delivery of other services”. But it said this was a “last resort”. The total municipal arrears of more than 30 days sat at R4.6billion by last month.

The Treasury is currently reviewing an application by Eskom to hike power prices by 25% — more than six times the most recently calculated inflation rate of 3.9% in February. —