The Executive Mayor of the city of Johannesburg, Mpho Moerane, says Soweto and other parts of the city will start sourcing electricity from City Power.
Eskom has been battling to get payments from the residents.
Soweto residents owe Eskom billions of rands in unpaid bills.
Through negotiations with the city, R5 billion of the debt was written off in the past financial year.
Moerane says negotiations in this matter are at an advance stage.
“We have a plan, we are not going to rely solely on electricity. We will be investing money [on] solar and gas to those households that they can not afford electricity. Issue of non payment in Soweto has been there for a long time.”
“We are going to talk to our residents that we will have to give them smart meters. Smart meters will be ale to interact with your meter through a smart phone to look at your consumption,” adds Moerane.
The below audio file is the full interview:
Earlier, the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee said it wants Eskom to write off its entire R16 billion electricity bill that residents owe to the state-owned power utility.
This, despite the power utility’s announcement during their annual result presentation that they are owed R35.3 billion in municipal debt and reporting a financial loss of almost R19 billion.
Two weeks ago, President Cyril Ramaphosa promised the people of Soweto their electricity issues will soon be a thing of the past.
He was speaking after interacting with residents in some parts of the township, including Nomzamo informal settlement where residents have had no electricity for over two years and Chiawelo and Naledi, where there have been cut-offs and general power outages.
Soweto has been experiencing serious electricity problems compounded by cable theft, and sub-stations have been blown up.
Ramaphosa promises to deal with the electricity problems in Soweto:
