Eskom 'must name non-payers'

Pretoria - Eskom must state before the end of January whether it is going to release details of what municipalities owe it.

This follows after the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) sent a request to Eskom in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act.

According to an accompanying letter, the NTU wants to protect its members who pay their electricity accounts or who buy pre-paid power from a situation where the municipalities do not pay the money to Eskom and the whole town's power is cut off.

According to NTU spokesperson Jaap Kelder, Eskom's information officer, Eddie Laubscher, apparently undertook to collect the information, but said the decision whether it should be made known is not in his hands.

In the letter to Laubscher, Kelder refers to recent cases when the power in Ogies and Edenville was cut off.

The NTU has apparently been trying to find out from Eskom for nearly a year already how much each municipality owes it, without success.

According to Kelder, municipalities that do not pay Eskom promptly are violating the Electricity Act and the Municipal Finance Management Act.

The National Treasury is also violating the latter Act, Kelder says, by not monitoring municipalities' payments for wholesale purchases.

He says that members of the public who do pay their electricity bills nevertheless run the risk of their water and sewerage systems (that run on electric pumps) coming to a halt if a town's power is cut off, with subsequent health risks.

- Sake24.com

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