DA calls for Jo'burg City Power probe

The Democratic Alliance will write to the Public Protector Thuli Madonsela asking her to probe the City of Johannesburg power mismanagement.

The City of Johannesburg is R86-million out of pocket after discovering that more than 400 high-end power users were not linked to its billing system (see Times report).

Now it is in a mad dash to recoup the millions but has less than four weeks until the end of its financial year - its self-imposed target date - to recover the debt.

The rush is made increasingly difficult by the fact that the city still has to link the users, bill them and recover all the money.

This has arisen because City Power is trying to use equipment which has been purchased under the Edison Contract to link the users and meters purchased prior to the Edison contract to the database and this has proved to be technically problematic.

The DA has learnt that the residents are being forced   to accept a change of their meter to a SMART meter against their wishes.

We strongly condemn this action by City Power, we find it outrageous that City Power insists on installing a new meter and intimidate residents with a threat of a cut-off.

The infrastructure to accept the remote data capture has never functioned properly and meters are still being read manually. We believe that this represents fruitless and wasteful expenditure and should be taken up by the MPAC committee immediately.

Those using the equipment purchased under the Edison contracts are being forced into service because the City placed an enormous contract for the supply of these meters and associated equipment for supply from a source seemingly because the contractor is well-connected to the ANC.

We will write to the Public Protector and request an investigation into this matter.

Statement issued by Councillor Denis Hunt, DA Johannesburg spokesperson on City Power, June 4 2014

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter