Task team to provide ‘technical assessment’ in Joburg, Eskom billing dispute

The five-person task team to look into billing issues between the City of Johannesburg and Eskom will have 14 days to provide feedback from the “independent technical assessment” it will carry out during that period.

City Power has confirmed it will honour the R1.4bn account for October. 

Electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa briefed media on Monday on the recent public and spat between the two power utilities.

Last Thursday, Eskom shared publicly it has delivered a notice of intent to interrupt the power supply to the city at predetermined times of day in compliance with the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act (Paja).

The utility said it would issue a public notice on November 8 inviting all interested and affected parties to submit written representations, comments and/or submissions indicating why Eskom should or should not proceed to interrupt electricity supply to the points mentioned in the Paja notice.

It said a final decision on whether Eskom will proceed with interruption will be communicated after the representations received through the Paja process on December 12 are reviewed.

In response, Tebogo Moraka, the city's group financial officer, urged Eskom to retract its public notice and engage in “genuine, good-faith negotiations to resolve the matter constructively”.

Ramokgopa provided the outcomes of a meeting held with the city and Eskom before the briefing. One of these was both parties agreed on a number of “principles that must underpin discussions” between them in future. These include respect for the intergovernmental relations framework, as well as the user pays principle. With the latter, it was agreed that in the event of a billing dispute the city ought to keep to its obligation to pay its current bill in full and not partially as it has been doing for the past year.

“At the heart of this dispute is City Power, and by extension [City of] Johannesburg, that is aggrieved by the accuracy of the billing ... stretching back to 2019,” Ramokgopa said.

“The discussions have been happening and the parties were not able to find each other and this is what activated my participation and [that of] the mayor. We've agreed that we're not restarting a process; it has been unfolding and we're able to identify a point of failure and that's where we're going to start.

“We're agreeing that [we] need an independent technical assessment to reconcile and confirm the billing on the part Eskom and what City Power claims is the accurate one. Independent, in this instance, means someone who doesn't have an association with either party.”

Ramokgopa said they would approach the South African National Energy Development Institute to assist with sourcing this technical expert. That person will be supported by two technical people each from the city and Eskom. This five-person panel will have until November 25 to provide feedback after its assessment.

The minister conceded City Power has underbilled by about R5bn as a result of load-shedding and has been “doing catch-up” since then.

He also touched on the spiralling municipality debt, which had ballooned from R78bn to R90bn in just three months.

“You're seeing an average increase of debt owed to Eskom of about R3bn per month. I accept the tariff dispensation during the winter is higher than the rest of the year, so this might not be an accurate reflection of the trendline.

“The point I'm making is the trendline is on the up and just on the account of the past three months that debt has grown by R12bn.”

Mayor Dada Morero assured residents there was no crisis despite the city's spiralling debt to Eskom and said there would be no threat of disconnection.

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