City Power announces a shocking monthly R200 basic charge for Jozi residents

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