Prepaid power gripes

City Power: Why some customers charged 50% of initial amount

- Vhahangwele Nemakonde

City Power CEO Tshifularo Mashava has explained a phenomenon in which customers reload their prepaid electricity meters, only for the power utility to charge them a fixed fee of about 50% of their initial amount.

This comes amid complaints about the high cost of units beyond the R200 surcharge on prepaid electricity for residential customers, introduced last year.

Mashava explained in a media briefing yesterday why the power utility was charging some customers more than others.

"With prepaid customers, we charge a basic fee of about R200, whereas we charge the post-paid customers about R900," said Mashava.

"Last year, we needed to validate meters. In that process, we obviously discovered customers who had bypassed their meters or whose meters were vandalised. We corrected this from around December, January and February.