Soweto residents want plug pulled on R500 monthly charge for electricity

JOHANNESBURG - Soweto residents are up in arms over a R500 monthly charge they will have to fork out over the next 12 months for electricity. 

This is part of a R6,000 penalty that Eskom is enforcing for those illegally connected to the grid. 

Millions of residents are being forced to pay the money in line with upgrading their prepaid electricity meters - which will no longer work as of Sunday if they don’t do the upgrade. 

"I must pay R500 for FNB every month, I pay R500 plus I must buy R350 electricity. As I am a pensioner, with this R2,000, I must pay R850 - how much I'm left with?" wondered Elizabeth Mayisela.

Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said the R500 was part of a penalty fee. 

READ: Tension brews in Diepkloof as frustrated residents seek to upgrade prepaid meters ahead of deadline

"The R500 generally that people are referring to is a penalty that is levied to people who have connected illegally and to make it easy it is R500 per month," he said.

Eskom employees will work extended hours into the weekend to clear the almost two million backlog. 

Meanwhile, some Soweto residents claim they didn’t know they needed to upgrade their meters.

This is despite Eskom's over-a-year campaign driven to inform citizens of the looming deadline.

On Sunday, the current prepaid electricity meters will stop operating due to a global technical switchover that needs to be completed. 
  
A Diepkloof resident, Thabo Thabane, says he hasn’t had electricity for several days. 

"I heard about it last week. There’s a lot of fake news going around, so I wanted to find out what exactly is happening. So, they gave me this code to check. When I used this code, I found out my system is not working. Then I went to the relevant vendor to try and buy electricity, only to find out that the machine itself is not working," said Thabane.