SOME residents in Naturena, south of Joburg, found themselves without electricity on Tuesday, 19 September.
This after City Power cut off the lights of defaulting and non-paying customers.
Although City Power was met with resistance from a section of the community, they continued with the operation despite angry residents claiming that they were not properly consulted on the need for them to pay for their electricity consumption.
But City Power spokesman Isaac Mangena said they engaged with the community of Naturena on numerous occasions in the past 10 years and following an engagement they had with the community in April 2023, they spent more than R9 million fixing the cable theft problem in the area.
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He said work was underway to normalise the network, which includes the installation of prepaid meters.
The operation was an effort to recoup more than R1,2 billion owed to the Revenue Service Delivery Centre, which is the depo responsible for Naturena.
As a starting point, City Power, joined by Joburg Water and other City of Joburg departments, disconnected about 20 customers in Naturena.
Mangena said the customers owed a combined amount of more thatn R5 million.
He said:
Backed by the SAPS and JMPD officers, they also removed some of the electricity infrastructure to avoid recurring cases of illegal connections to their network.
City Power was forced to switch off the whole street block of Malta Street due to its historical low levels of vending and one of the homeowners who owes them R267 000 refused the technicians entry into their property.
Mangena said they won't hesitate to do what they did on Malta Street in other sections of Naturena, which will unfortunately affect some paying customers.
