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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