City Power will extend working hours and suspend penalty fees for non-vending customers as it races against the clock to complete the metering upgrades ahead of the looming Token Identifier (TID) rollover project deadline on Sunday.
Non-vending customers are prepaid electricity customers who are not purchasing electricity through approved channels. City Power’s service delivery centres across Johannesburg will remain open until 7pm from Thursday to address the backlog of meters that need upgrading.
“Our offices will also be open on Saturday and Sunday to allow our teams to continue attending to TID related queries,” said the power utility’s spokesperson Isaac Mangena.
City Power opened a grace period for non-vending customers between Thursday and Sunday, where it will help resolve TID enquiries, including changing customers’ meters without any penalty fee imposed.
“Ordinarily, it would cost about R14,000 for a single-phase meter and over R30,000 for a three-phase meter to be replaced as a penalty for tampering. Given the present circumstances, City Power has decided to suspend the penalty fees, to ensure that each customer is accommodated,” Mangena said.
He said anyone who refused to take advantage of this opportunity would not only be unable to load units after Sunday, but they would also have to pay those penalties.
City Power said while 99% of its vending prepaid meters had been upgraded, there was still a handful of vending customers who were still outstanding. “On Monday, we were sitting with 1,061 customers whose meters were still pending the upgrades, plus 119 that were partially upgraded,” Mangena said.
He said the utility was now left with 1,001 customers requiring upgrades. “Out of those outstanding customers, 562 are in Alexandra, where our technicians are still facing some reluctance from customers. However, we have noticed that the majority of those customers who are refusing to give us access into their properties are opting to visit our service delivery centres to seek assistance with upgrades.”
City Power also had about 255 meters outstanding in Midrand.
Mangema said most of the customers were visiting City Power head office in Reuven, Booysens. He advised them to rather visit their nearest centre and avoid standing in long queues at the head office.
“We also encourage all outstanding customers to use the do-it-yourself method to complete the upgrade as an alternative. By purchasing electricity units, customers with unconverted meters will receive three 20-digit token codes, the last of which is the unit token code.”
TimesLIVE
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