On Friday, 24 March, City Power’s Revenue Protection Unit assisted by the JMPD conducted a raid on several businesses around Lenasia and managed to disconnect three shopping centres that had illegal meters.
Following the discovery of many businesses who defaulted and others who are illegally connected to the City Power network, the power utility calls on businesses in the area to approach them in order to arrange for a service agreement.
“We are worried about the discovery of many illegal meters not belonging to City Power that are not vending. It is not clear whether these meters belong to someone who is collecting revenue from the businesses. We have asked for an investigation to be done to get to the bottom of this. Other business customers were found to have illegally connected or bridged their meters,” said City Power’s spokesperson, Isaac Mangena.
He added: “City Power has always re-iterated that the disconnection drive is a last resort,and we would much rather have business come forward and fix their accounts with us. At this point we have prioritised getting rid of criminality and we call on business owners to do the right thing and pay for electricity usage. Failure to approach us will result in more adverse action as we will not relent in our pursuit to get customers to pay for services.”
The Lenasia SDC has also resolved to go on this drive regularly as the revenue it gets does not match the population and business activity in the area.
City Power is owed R1.4 billion by the customers across Lenasia service area.
