Stop Illegal Electricity Connections, It Causes Outages
The City is ramping up its work of eradicating cable and electricity theft.
Unannounced disconnection raids have been carried out across the City, the most recent in Delmore Park, Jerusalem, Chris Hani, Angelo and Lillianton around Boksburg. About 12 000 illegally connected cables cables were removed within a period of two days.
Though these measures are met with resistance by the community, considering the prohibitive costs of illegal electricity connections both to the City and other law-abiding citizens, the disconnection raids continue.
The costs of illegal electricity connection include replacement of cables, mini substations, pole mounted transformers, overhead lines, circuit breakers, fuses and substation equipment and refurbishment, revenue enhancement and network enhancement costs. This is in addition to over R2 million estimated loss of revenue due to bypassed electricity meters.
The City will continue with unannounced raids to disconnect illegal connections and stabilise the electricity supply across Ekurhuleni.
An indigent programme is run by the City for households that are unable to pay for their electricity as well as sufficient water, basic sanitation, refuse removal and supply of basic energy.
The benefits enjoyed by those who are registered include the following free services:
- Water- 9kl
- Sewer -9kl
- Electricity – 100kwh
- Refuse removal
- Property rates in line with newly adopted municipal property rates policy
