POLOKO TAU
CHIAWELO residents have once again marched on Eskom, demanding a flat-rate monthly tariff of R150 and the removal of prepaid meter boxes.
About 300 residents marched to Eskom’s Mapetla branch offices yesterday and presented a memorandum, giving Eskom seven days to respond. The residents want Eskom to remove its split metering system installed in Chiawelo in 2007. They claim the system was making electricity “too expensive” for them.
Protester Anna Masindi, an unemployed mother of four who shares a house with two brothers, said she joined the march because “I know the pain and suffering that has been brought by these new meters”.
She said: “I have not had electricity since Sunday and I don’t even have R20 to buy any. We’re all unemployed in my house and at the rate that the electricity was going in Chiawelo we can’t afford to use it any more. Eskom must find a way of relieving us, as it has become clear over the years that the electricity has become unaffordable for us.”
Another resident Maria Mabaso, 55, said she had gone back to using a paraffin stove.
“I buy a litre of paraffin for R10 and can use it for up to three days, while R100 electricity used for lighting and cooking can only last not more than two days. Paraffin is bad for our health but we’re left with no choice.”
Timothy Makhokha said he is one of the residents who have bypassed electricity meters.
“How do Eskom expect poor people to spend their every cent on electricity? We want electricity to be affordable like it used to be and then no one will go and break Eskom’s boxes and connect illegally. Residents are angry and don’t want these prepaid meters and that is not because they want free electricity, but it is too expensive for us.”
Eskom spokeswoman Lesego Motshwane said the power utility did not have flat-rate tariff for residential customers and added that tariffs were determined by the National Energy Regulator of SA.
“We’ll continue to educate our customers on our tariffs and make them understand that they pay for what they use and a little bit more if they use too much electricity as per our inclined block tariff system. We’ll continue to disconnect those who do not pay for the service and those who tamper with our system,” she said.
She said Eskom was faced with the challenge of residents bypassing meters to get free electricity and technicians were prevented from fixing meters that had been tampered with.
Motshwane said Eskom was not backing off on its plan to roll out the split metering system in the rest of Soweto after installing it in Chiawelo as a pilot project in 2007.