Residents of the City of Johannesburg will have to dig deeper into their pockets after the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) approved City Power’s application for a 12.7% tariff increase.
City Power spokesperson, Isaac Mangena, said the utility applied for an increase after careful consideration of various factors that affect operations and customers.
He said the tariff are determined by several key factors including inflation, operational cost and cost structure.
“Our tariff application to NERSA was in line with the consideration of the current economic conditions where most of our residents are affected by the rising costs of living, and we considered our customers' best interest to cushion them while ensuring sustainable service delivery continues,’’ said Mangena.
Furthermore, Mangena explained that while implementing the tariff hike, they also considered indigent customers and decided to give them a slightly lower increase.
“The average increase to a typical indigent customer was limited to 6.21% as they are the most vulnerable customer category,” he said.
Meanwhile, last week, Eskom obtained a court order against the City of Joburg, demanding that the municipality settle its debt of over R1 billion, which has escalated to R3.4 billion due to interest.
“Eskom has written a letter to City of Joburg and City Power demanding payment of the full amount of R3.4 billion by June 21, 2024 and we hope they will respect the court decision and settle all outstanding debts to Eskom,” the utility said in a statement.
When the matter was heard, the municipality brought a counter-claim against the power utility for R3.4 billion, alleging potential over-billing. As a result, it applied for an automatic set-off against Eskom’s electricity account. However, the court dismissed the municipality’s counter-claim with costs.
Eskom said the Joburg City Power started to default on their payments in October 2023 and the utility has received no payments since March 2024.
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