Johnathan Paoli
Joburg City Power has announced, starting this week, residential prepaid customers of the metro will be charged an additional basic charge of R200 for electricity network and service charges.
This follows the recent announcement by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) of a 12.72% tariff increase similarly to commence from Monday.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said residents of the metro enjoyed being on the lowest tariff that did not include a basic charge for operational and maintenance costs.
“The residential prepaid customer does not adequately contribute to the fixed network operating cost, the cost attributed to repairing and maintaining the network to ensure availability on demand,” Mangena said.
Mangena said the basic charge consisted of a R70 service charge and a R130 network capacity charge before consideration of value added tax (VAT).
“The total basic charge will be recovered from the qualifying prepaid customers using the prepayment platform, this implies that when a customer purchases electricity the R200 will be recovered upfront before any consumption-related charges,” Mangena said.
He said that in cases where customers purchase monthly electricity for less than R400 at the beginning of the month, the payment will be split between covering the fixed charge and charges for consumption.
Mangena confirmed the residential prepaid high tariff would continue to be based on the inclining block tariff methodology as prescribed by NERSA, and said all amounts are exclusive of VAT.
City Power General Manager for Tariffs Frank Hinda said the monthly fee would be charged whether customers purchase electricity or not.
He said when a customer temporarily leaves the city and does not purchase electricity for an extended period, the charges will accumulate on the system until the next purchase.
“The logic is very simple. When you come back after two or three months, you would want to press a button, switch on your fridge, geyser, etc and you’d expect electricity. It’s not like when you’re away, the city rolls up the network and puts it somewhere else. It remains available to you and that is the availability we need to provide for in the form of a fixed charge,” Hinda said.
He said in cases where the customer failed to purchase enough electricity to cover the monthly fee, the outstanding amount would be carried over to the next month.
Hinda said that only indigent prepaid customers, who are earning less than R6000 a month, and registered on the system, would be considered for a lower customer tariff and not subject to the R200 charge.
In addition, he said the monthly charge would only apply to prepaid and not postpaid customers, who are billed at the end of each month.
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