The city of Tshwane has implemented an aggressive credit control approach in its quest to recoup the billions of rand it is owed by defaulting customers.
With effect from Thursday, the city has blocked the electricity prepaid meters of customers whose accounts are in arrears.
This effectively means that, if a customer whose account is in arrears attempts to purchase electricity, they will not get the units; instead, all that money will be channelled towards the outstanding debt.
Previously, the city used to take 60% of the money for the purchase of electricity, but it became clear that this lenient approach did not jolt customers to keep their accounts up to-date.
“Section 4.6 of the city’s credit control policy allows for 60% or 100% blocking of the prepaid meter until the outstanding arrear amount has been settled,” the city said in a statement.
“In most cases, residents’ municipal accounts are in arrears on their property rates, water consumption and other services and have been ignoring these bills because they were able to load credits on their prepaid meters.”
With the strict enforcement of credit control, customers have to either pay their outstanding bill in full or enter into a payment arrangement with the city for their prepaid meters to be unblocked and be able to purchase electricity units.
A dedicated team has been established and capacitated to assist with enquiries. A minimum 30% payment for the outstanding amount is required.
There are some customers that have declared a dispute on their accounts, however, this does not put the payment of the bill in abeyance while awaiting the resolution of the dispute, according to the metro.
“It is the responsibility of the customer to pay for the services they consumed.
“The city has discovered that some of its customers would deliberately declare a dispute to avoid or delay payment of their accounts. This abuse of process has now been nipped in the bud with the 100% blocking of the prepaid meter.
“Our teams are working and will continue to work next week until Saturday. They will resume on December 27 until December 30. Unblocking the meter ordinarily takes about 30 minutes upon receipt of proof of payment which should be sent to [email protected].
Pretoria News