City Power says it is determined to take on delinquent households using illegal connections in Alexandra’s Riverpark community. This follows violent protests by residents on Thursday while the power utility’s staff cut power to hundreds of houses.
Most residents in the area have bypassed meters or connected directly to the network which regularly overloads infrastructure, leading to frequent outages and heightened fire risks.
On 28 May, Riverpark residents protested outside the Alexandra Service Delivery Centre, following the disconnection of nine properties a day earlier, all found to be illegally connected or with tampered meters. Earlier this year, City Power’s smart meter rollout disrupted protesters.
It comes as City Power is reportedly sitting on a R16.3-billion negative bank balance, which jeopardises the City of Johannesburg’s ability to deliver services and remain financially sustainable. The power utility has said that one of the major contributing factors to its massive overdraft is electricity theft and illegal connections.
According to City Power, it discovered that about 470 households in Riverpark had no recorded electricity purchases, and a further 367 registered customers had “suspiciously low” electricity purchases, strongly indicative of meter tampering.
The power utility’s teams arrived in the community on Thursday with the intention of cutting all the connections. They only managed to disconnect a few when residents became violent and threatened staff on site to reconnect the homes and leave the area.
Some protesters we spoke to said they were upset that City Power demanded fees of up to R2,000 to have their electricity connected legally. One of them was pensioner Victoria Smith. She said she paid R2,000 for her electricity to be reconnected, but it was still off on Thursday.
Tlaleng Mmoa, who also had her electricity cut on Thursday, said: “We don’t understand why they are coming to cut because they are also cutting off those who are paying. Is it because they are sharing the box with those who are not paying?”
She said they recently met with officials who warned those bypassing their meter boxes had until 9 June to rectify the situation. “We can’t afford to buy electricity,” she said.
In a statement on Thursday evening, City Power spokesman Isaac Mangena said they were “left with no option but to disconnect the power supply to safeguard the network”.
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