Eskom price hikes causing problems in Cape Town

Daniel Puchert

Daniel Puchert

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Cape Town's big Eskom price hike problem

The City of Cape Town's member of the mayoral committee (MMC) for energy, Xanthea Limberg, has said that increased tampering with electricity meters linked to Eskom price hikes could lead to supply disruptions in the future.

This was said during a Newzroom Afrika interview with the MMC following the City's announcement that 12,000 meters had been tampered with.
 
akescpt said:
stop talking kak..you will just pass everything on to us...with your nice margin as well...idiots...
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She kinda does have a point.
Even though they add their markup or service fees they do understand that if something becomes too expensive, people tend to turn to illegal ways to obtain it.
Same with tax evasion and Supersport.
 
So you want to tell me there is no way to see what meters never reloads with units and then investigate why?

You buy units for a specific meter number don't you?? ... so if meter 12345 never buys, then duh.
 
SubtleBeast said:
She kinda does have a point.
Even though they add their markup or service fees they do understand that if something becomes too expensive, people tend to turn to illegal ways to obtain it.
Same with tax evasion and Supersport.
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a municipality shouldn't be making a profit...at the moment I believe they are making a profit...they want to be the belle of the municipalities but its their ratepayers that must fuel all the kak they do...their increases should just be done to cover their expenses but I don't think that's how it works here...
 
akescpt said:
a municipality shouldn't be making a profit...at the moment I believe they are making a profit...they want to be the belle of the municipalities but its their ratepayers that must fuel all the kak they do...their increases should just be done to cover their expenses but I don't think that's how it works here...
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Certainly, it's possible that they generate revenue from selling electricity, but those profits might be used for other services. If not, they may need to raise your rates.
 
BBSA said:
Certainly, it's possible that they generate revenue from selling electricity, but those profits might be used for other services. If not, they may need to raise your rates.
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but that's exactly my point...they deflect it onto other service providers but their programs are built into our high tariffs...
 
Wot? Increasing prices by 700% in a decade making it near impossible for many to afford it and the slapping 'connection and network fees' on top of it as those people who can't afford it used less so you had to charge them moar anyway for using nothing, all just results in moar theft? Unpossible. How did no one see this coming?
 
akescpt said:
a municipality shouldn't be making a profit...at the moment I believe they are making a profit...they want to be the belle of the municipalities but its their ratepayers that must fuel all the kak they do...their increases should just be done to cover their expenses but I don't think that's how it works here...
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I imagine a municipality living hand-to-mouth like that would quickly fall apart. I expect a municipality to have some amount of capital available to cover new projects. Only way to have that capital available would be to run at a "profit".

Don't get me wrong. Cape Town rates and such are crazy, but the city does run exceptionally well relative to other municipalities.

I don't know about you but I personally want my municipality to be the belle of the municipalities. When I see the absolute nonsense mates of mine in JHB and such have to deal with from the muni. Constant water and power disruptions etc.. I complain less about how expensive Cape Town is. At least it functions at a basic level.
 
Good everyone should join the other 50% of the population not paying for electricity!
 
I have received a bill for July (an "actual" meter reading) which was twice my usual usage, yet me and my wife were overseas during the whole period of July with basically nothing running at home besides the fridge.
I contacted Eskom about this and all they did is send me a photo of the meter reading.

Then the bill for August came, which was half of July's... meanwhile we've been using space heaters and water heating galore compared to July...

How is it possible that our usage doubled during a month where we weren't even at home?

I assume their "average" reading for June was off, and that they "made up" for this in July? What a clown show operation if that is the case

Any tips for getting converted to prepaid? What is the process?
 
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porchrat said:
I imagine a municipality living hand-to-mouth like that would quickly fall apart. I expect a municipality to have some amount of capital available to cover new projects. Only way to have that capital available would be to run at a "profit".

Don't get me wrong. Cape Town rates and such are crazy, but the city does run exceptionally well relative to other municipalities.

I don't know about you but I personally want my municipality to be the belle of the municipalities. When I see the absolute nonsense mates of mine in JHB and such have to deal with from the muni. Constant water and power disruptions etc.. I complain less about how expensive Cape Town is. At least it functions at a basic level.
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I see it the other way around. Cape Town is not expensive, other municipalities are cheap. I believe all municipalities will be charging what CoCT is charging if they were as well run.
As with most things in life you get what you pay for.
 
WollieVerstege said:
I see it the other way around. Cape Town is not expensive, other municipalities are cheap. I believe all municipalities will be charging what CoCT is charging if they were as well run.
As with most things in life you get what you pay for.
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100% agree.

It is simply the cost of maintaining a functioning city while national infrastructure collapses.

There's a reason places like JHB are drowning in maintenance backlogs with systems failing left and right.
 
Capetown becoming less and less of a destination choice to those not in the millionaire bracket. Haven't lived there in decades, but spent enough time there to know that the cost of living is far to high.
 
eye_suc said:
SQL: 
SELECT pm.meter_number,
       SUM(pp.purchase_amount) AS 'Purchase Amount',
       COUNT(pp.id) AS 'Times Purchased'
FROM prepaid_meters pm
INNER JOIN prepaid_purchases pp ON pp.meter = pm.meter_number
WHERE pp.purchase_date > DATEADD(month, -24, GETDATE())
GROUP BY pm.meter_number
ORDER BY COUNT(pp.id) ASC;


Will show you who has purchased the least in the last 2 years, and the ZEROS will float to the top. This is for MSSQL, adjust for other flavours of SQL.
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The problem is that the meters don't give feedback. So yes you can tell who is paying but you can't tell the difference between meters that have been diverted, fraudulently loaded or have been broken and replaced. Also who has gone off grid.
They relying on the manual tracking/auditing of these things.
 
eye_suc said:
All true yes. It could show you an off-grid person if they went off grid suddenly as they wont make any prepaid purchases.

In any case, it would have been interesting to see what their data looks like since the MUST be something along those lines.
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They should totally audit it.
If a metre has not be loaded in a year, and people are paying the levy... then what is happening with that metre.

I bet there are a massive amount of reasons for this though. I listed a few but there are possibly more.
Its probably more complex where they have to check each property, find the associated metre, then confirm its usage.
There is also probably a high correlation between people who are not paying their rates and not loading units... abandoned properties etc...

This is also why the metre fees are going up...
 
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