By Akani Nkuna
Millions of people face being shut off from Eskom’s power supply if they do not recode their prepaid meters by Sunday, according to Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.
Briefing the media on Wednesday, the minister called on Eskom prepaid customers to urgently recode their meters to maintain uninterrupted services.
After Sunday, meters will no longer accept electricity tokens. The utility’s 6.9 million prepaid meters are currently using the outdated KRN1 (Key Revision Number 1).
This means that once the existing credits run out, the meters will be inoperable unless updated to KRN2.
“Eskom reminds all prepaid customers that by 24 November 2024, all prepayment meters must be recoded… to ensure continued functionality,” Ramokgopa said while updating reporters on the Integrated Resource Plan, which provides a roadmap for meeting the country’s electricity demands.
He confirmed that Eskom had completed the pre-coding for 6.9 million meters.
“There are 2.1 million people who have not migrated. These people stand a risk of not having access to electricity from Monday. These are the people who are going to bear the costs of the replacement of that meter. These are the people who must wait to have these meters installed so that they can get electricity,” Ramakgopa warned.
Eskom has escalated a nationwide awareness initiative on the meter recoding.
“Those who are sitting with this problem [are] people who have likely have not been purchasing electricity for the past 6 months. They have not bought [electricity and yet] they have got a prepaid meter, they have never bought,” said Ramokgopa.
He encouraged those who were illegally connected to come forward, promising that Eskom would be lenient towards them.
“Customers with meters still on KRN1 are likely to be those that have not purchased electricity for more than six months or might be using unauthorised tokens. It is essential for these customers to go to an authorised vendor, purchase legitimate tokens, obtain their recoding codes and recode their meters,” the minister urged.
He warned customers not to wait until the last day to recode their meters as there may not be enough capacity.
“… the 2.1 million is a huge number and we are left with four days. So, it means that on average we should be connecting about 500,000 people a day. That is a huge task,” he said.
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