Civil rights organisation AfriForum claims energy utility Eskom “has no right” to interrupt power to ten of the country’s top 20 defaulting municipalities, asserting in a comment paper submitted to the utility on Thursday that it was unconstitutional for Eskom to indirectly cut off power supply to paying consumers that were entitled to electricity.

“Municipalities have a constitutional and statutory responsibility to provide basic municipal services and, while [we sympathise] with Eskom’s situation, we cannot allow paying consumers to be deprived of electricity services,” noted AfriForum community affairs manager Tiaan Esterhuizen.

While the State-owned company had reached payment agreements with half of the top 20 defaulting municipalities, it said last month that the balance would face scheduled power interruptions from June.

The 20 local municipalities aggregately owed Eskom about R3.68-billion for bulk electricity supply, which had been reduced by R54-million since the power utility threatened cut-offs for these municipalities earlier in April.

Eskom last week started issuing disconnection notices to the remaining defaulting municipalities, requesting stakeholders that would be affected by the interruptions to submit comments before June 2.

According to AfriForum, Eskom would make its final decision two days later, on June 4.

“[This] is not enough time for a rational decision on something that may affect thousands of people, businesses, community organisations and government institutions such as hospitals and schools adversely,’ said Esterhuizen.

Confirming on Thursday that it had issued its comment on the matter to Eskom, the organisation said it had appealed to the utility to make use of alternative remedies available under the Electricity Regulation Act.

Eskom could, it argued, approach the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) to issue a notice of compliance as per Section 18 of the Act. If the municipalities then still did not comply with their licence conditions, Nersa could fine them 10% of their yearly income, or R2-million a day upon receipt of the notice.

Eskom could also request that Nersa cancel the licences of nonpaying municipalities and to allocate these to the district or to Eskom itself.

“[This] will be less drastic than disconnecting a community's total electricity supply. Nersa and the MECs for local governments should, [in any event], have intervened earlier to prevent the accumulation of debt,” Esterhuizen argued.