City Power has a 99% completion rate on its vending pre-paid meter upgrades. Picture: Supplied/City Power
Joburg’s City Power has warned residents on prepaid electricity that they will have to upgrade their meters before November 24 to be able to load units on their prepaid meters at home.
This comes as the utility continues to rollout its Token Identifier (TID) roll-over deadline, which will see thousands of households upgraded to the KRN2 system, from the current KRN1 system, which is being phased out.
Joburg has also afforded non-compliant households who have tampered or breached their electricity connections a grace period to be onboarded onto the system without incurring any further charges or penalties.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said they had communicated an extension of the TID roll-over deadline from November 24, 2024 to May 31, 2025, but he explained that this was “specifically limited to the generation of Key Change Tokens only”.
This means that all Joburg households have to be compliant before November 24, 2024, but an additional grace period for November 24, 2024 to May 31, 2025, has been approved to give households and electricity users who previously had breached and tampered electricity connections an opportunity to be onboarded.
The Key Change Tokens will be reserved only for those customers until May 31, 2025, while other Joburg residents will have to have completed their meter upgrades before November 24, 2024.
Mangena emphasised that all prepaid customers must still complete their TID roll-over by next month.
The South African Local Government Association (Salga) stipulated that the postponement of the deadline to May 31, 2025 only applied on the generation of Key Change Tokens.
“Customers who have not yet upgraded from KRN1 to KRN2 as required in a month’s time, will no longer be able to load units on their meters after the cut-off date,” Mangena said.
City Power said that those residents who are still in the process of normalising their meters should be aware that there is still a grace period between now and May 31, 2025.
“If their meters are normalised post the November deadline, entities can still generate Key Change Tokens, to enable metering code upgrade,” Mangena added.
“If the May deadline passes and customers still refuse to get their meters normalised, then they face having to purchase new meters altogether,” he emphasised.
City Power has a 99% completion rate on vending pre-paid meter upgrades across their Services Delivery Centres (SDCs) supply areas in Johannesburg.
The utility noted that Roodepoort, Reuven, Randburg, and Lenasia SDCs have achieved over 99.5% compliance, while Midrand and Hursthill stand at 99%, the Inner City at 98%, and Alexandra at 89%.
“Overall, we have successfully recoded 140,578 out of 141,917 vending pre-paid meters, resulting in a project completion rate of 99%,” Mangena said.
City Power has a major issue with a separate 140,000 meters not vending, and this is due primarily to tampering.
“Many customers are bypassing their meters to avoid paying for the electricity they use daily; hence many are refusing our technicians access for meter audits.”
Mangena said that the utility is actively addressing this challenge and are committed to resolving it.
“Our goal is to ensure all customers are metered and accounted for, and that everyone pays their fair share for electricity usage.”
IOL BUSINESS