Ekurhuleni encourages converting to prepaid
According to Piet Ellis, who resides in the mentioned suburb, the meters battle to find signal.
This has left residents literally in the dark, without any source of electricity, for a couple of days.
“Previously, I have been without power between two to three days,” Ellis said.
He has been at the Ekurhuleni municipal offices numerous times to address the problem; the last was on Monday, June 6, after struggling again to load the units onto the prepaid meter.
On his visit at the electrical department, Ellis was allegedly told that the problem will be sorted within the next 48 hours.
However, by Friday, June 10, no one had even been to Cinderella to find the root cause of the problem.
Again he went to the municipal offices (on Friday, June 10).
“The prepaid meter technician was sick, therefore no one came out to test the meters. He might only be back on Monday or Tuesday,” Ellis said.
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“It is unacceptable – why do they only have one prepaid meter technician in Boksburg? Why do we get such bad service if we pay their salaries?”
Ellis was reportedly told that someone would be at his property within the next 10 minutes, to load the units temporarily at the electricity box.
“Only on Friday, at 8.30pm, someone arrived at my house, but to no avail, because this person doesn’t have knowledge on prepaid meters,” Ellis said.
On Monday, June 13, at noon, the prepaid meter technician eventually arrived in Cinderella to test the residents’ prepaid meters.
“While testing the meters he found that they are faulty, in the sense that they can’t find signal. Apparently the meters were not thoroughly tested before being distributed to the residents,” Ellis said.
“There is too much interference from digital appliances, like cellphones, computers and televisions. I’ll have to switch off all the appliances in my house to find a signal on the meter.
“The technician has switched my electricity to another phase, so at least the meter is working fine now.”
If the problem persists, Ellis will need to get a new prepaid meter.
He added that some of his neighbours’ prepaid meters were not in a working condition at all and they had to get new ones.
The Advertiser is still awaiting a response from the Ekurhuleni municipality on this matter.
Pre-paid resident’s electricity wrongly disconnected
