City Power cuts the lights for non-paying Naturena residents, despite attempts to block officials
Joburg City Power has cut the lights of non-paying Naturena residents who attempted to block officials, saying they should cut off places like Soweto, Mountain View, and Freedom Park as well.
Angry residents tried to ward off officials by resisting their presence, but a police delegation from the SA Police Service (SAPS) and the Joburg Metro Police (JMPD) were able to intervene, allowing officials to cut the lights. City Power managed to disconnect 20 houses in the area on Tuesday.
However, owing to rising tensions, the officials have cut short their operation as some Naturena residents were seen threatening police officers.
The Naturena community owes the City of Johannesburg a collective R309 million in unpaid electricity bills, while over R10 billion is owed by non-paying residents and businesses around the whole municipality.
City Power said it was owed over R90 million in the past three years by Naturena residents who had managed to bypass the system. It said out of 3,000 registered prepaid customers in the area, only about half were paying for their electricity in the area.
City Power is in Naturena to disconnect electricity from non-vending, illegally connected, and defaulting customers.
— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) September 19, 2023
Of the 3000 prepaid customers in Naturena, only less than half of those are vending, costing City Power almost R27m annually. @CityofJoburgZA pic.twitter.com/KBxLiagltN
Some of the homes cut off on Tuesday did not have City Power-serviced connections, despite being connected to City Power infrastructure.
An angry resident, Lulama Memela, who was animated, wearing a red T-shirt, said it was unfair for City Power to disconnect the power while residents were at work.
"We are black people at the end of the day; if they want us to connect illegally, we will do that," she said to journalists.
City Manager Floyd Brink led the delegation that descended on Naturena on Tuesday, cutting off an entire block of houses that have been refusing to pay for electricity for close to a decade.
Angry residents shouted at officials, saying they should be disconnecting electricity from Soweto, Mountain View, and Freedom Park as well.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena, who spoke to 702, said it was unacceptable for well-to-do communities with bonded houses, double-storeys, and double-door garages to refuse to pay their electricity bills.
"We have been engaging with this community for over 10 years. There are good residents here who are paying, but there are some bad ones who have been refusing to pay, and we have now decided to cut off the block that we have identified has many non-vendors.
"When we came to check their meters, they locked the doors, so we have decided to cut the lights for the whole block, and whoever is in good standing can come forward, and we will reconnect them," said Mangena.
Mangena said there was resistance from the community, and they had expected it.
"Today we wanted to go to the pre-identified houses and cut them off; we have done that. The residents who tried to block us were dealt with by law enforcement. We are going to come back to Naturena, and we are going to go back to the inner city to deal with them as well," he said.
Residents complained of intimidation, saying police should be fighting crime, not electricity matters.
Last week, Joburg City Power officials managed to disconnect the power at just one of four targeted hijacked buildings in the inner city that owed the municipality over R20 million between them.
Among the four buildings, they had last paid the city an electricity bill in 2017.
The officials faced threats at several buildings as City Power officials attempted to cut the power, leading to the operation being abandoned.
The SAPS had conducted a risk assessment and advised against the continuation of the operation, owing to a lack of sufficient personnel.
** The story has been updated to reflect the scale of the amount owed by the residents of Naturena.
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