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The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Johannesburg demands that City Power, urgently conducts an audit of all outstanding revenue and intensify their debt collection campaign, starting with state entities.

As per the 2023 Attorney General report, City Power was R14 billion into its overdraft. Since then, it has been actively seeking ways to recover revenue.

City Power had a meeting with CoJ Public Representatives yesterday regarding the R230 service charge to pre-paid customers, following the outrage over the fee. The service and network charges are intended to cover City Power’s repair and network maintenance.  City Power has long considered applying this service charge to prepaid customers but implementing it now in light of the cost-of-living crisis is deemed inappropriate.

Compounding the matter, the implementation of load reduction, signals that the grid is in fact struggling.There are close to 500 plants out of service, forcing severely lacking interventions on a daily basis. City Power must address its financial management and maintenance programs to resolve these challenges.

Pre-paid metering is a guaranteed solution for City Power to get its money upfront and allow for customers to measure in real time their costs and usage.

If the city and its entities truly cared, they must collect monies owed from various government departments, currently totalling R620 million as per the AG’s report. This includes departments such as PRASA, Telkom, TRANSNET, Provincial Departments of Health, Housing, Education and Infrastructure.

Let the executive start there, rather than chasing pie in the sky loans, and unnecessary pre-paid costs. The DA will continue to hold the city and City Power accountable for providing reliable electricity to the people of Johannesburg.

Issued by Cllr Nicole van Dyk - DA Johannesburg Shadow MMC of EMS