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After almost nine months families in
Hartbeespoort are still unable to get prepaid electricity meters
from the Local Municipality of Madibeng. |
Still no prepaid meters available
After almost nine months residents of
Hartbeespoort are still not able to access prepaid electricity for
their homes. Earlier this year Kormorant reported on the nine
families who had tried since the beginning of the year to buy these
meters from the Local Municipality of Madibeng after they decided to
switch their electricity provision over to this system.
The nine families had, at that stage, spoken to the municipality on
numerous occasions and even offered to pay in advance should meters
become available to ensure that they get one, but to no avail. The
municipality indicated that there were no meters available and that
they cannot accept the families? money in advance as they could not
say when meters will be available again.
At that stage, a representative for the families, Debbie van
Jaarsveld, told Kormorant that the different members of the families
had visited both the Hartbeespoort and Brits municipal offices on a
regular basis and soon discovered that all of the families had the
same problem. They decided to work together in the hope that as a
group they would be able to resolve the problem.
The group contacted neighbouring municipalities that had meters
available but was told that they could buy meters from them but that
the meters would then not be on Madibeng?s system and they would not
be able to buy electricity units locally.
Their next step was to contact the company that supplied the meters
to the municipality with the same result.
The families then wanted to know if they could not buy the meters
and then take it to the municipality to be put on the local system.
The municipality?s response at that stage was that they were aware
of the problem and hoped that it would be speedily resolved.
This past week it came to light that after another several months
have passed there are still no meters available at the municipality.
With the same result to enquiries - that the municipality cannot say
when meters would be available again.
According to information the reason for the unavailability of
prepaid electricity meters is that the municipality has reportedly
not paid the supplier and that the supplier insists that the amount
of two million rand be paid before new meters will be supplied.
Money previously paid for meters by consumers was allegedly used for
purposes other than paying the supplier.
Mr. Tumelo Tshabalala, communication officer for the Local
Municipality of Madibeng, said in response to renewed enquiries that
the supplier that residents have been speaking of is not the
supplier of meters to Madibeng. He said that the demand for
electricity meters in Madibeng is very high and once the stock
arrives it is sold out immediately.
?One other contributing factor is that the manufacturing process is
not as fast as one would expect, it takes long so most of the time
we have to wait for the shipment. We are expecting another shipment
of 500 meters soon,? Tshabalala said.
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16 October 2008 |