Eskom faces R2.2 billion municipal debt and ongoing challenges in KwaZulu-Natal
Eskom officials in KwaZulu-Natal have laid bare the challenges they face, including municipal debt of R2.2 billion.
Marlaine Nair, chairperson of the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Portfolio Committee, said they had requested Eskom to brief the committee on the thorny issue of damaged electricity transformers that leave communities without power supply.
“The committee also shared with Eskom issues raised by the public and councillors to get feedback and work towards overall improvement,” said Nair.
She said Eskom was working to remedy the many challenges including complaints of corruption with technicians, delayed response, hostile staff, and complaints of Eskom attending to faults several days after the complaint was logged.
Nair stated that the KZN Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) had loaned Eskom R30 million for the replacement of stolen/vandalised transformers.
“The Cabinet had reimbursed Cogta for the amount but we wanted to ascertain if this would be ongoing because it would not be sustainable. Eskom has moved toward being almost fully digitised, while many people simply want the human element of getting an empathetic human response.
“We have established a relationship with Eskom as a committee so we will be building on that. They have also taken our remarks and issues raised into consideration and pledged to work on them,” Nair said.
In terms of debt, municipalities in KZN owe R2.2 billion to Eskom. As of December 2024, the following municipalities owed money: Newcastle, Msunduzi, Mpofana, Ulundi, Endumeni, and Mthonjaneni.
Eskom reportedly maintains a positive working relationship with eThekwini Municipality, one of its major clients.
Street lighting, the Key Revision Number (KRN) rollover project, and illegal connections in certain eThekwini wards provided by Eskom in the municipal area are among the difficulties that Eskom and eThekwini are collaborating to resolve.
Eskom KZN is in charge of owning, maintaining, and supplying KZN’s 1.3 million customers with power. The main issues facing Eskom in KZN are illicit connections, theft, vandalism, subcontractors who seek 30% of Eskom projects, energy losses, overloading-related transformer failures, and locations where safety risks and crime prevent Eskom staff from attending to faults.
The KZN South Coast boasts more subterranean cable networks than the rest of the province, according to Eskom. Every week, wires are stolen and vandalised.
The power utility claims that subcontractors are refusing to comply with Eskom procedures and minimum criteria, demanding work, stopping electrification projects, and demanding their own rates.
Other challenges are:
▪ Customers are connecting themselves illegally and those already connected by Eskom are tampering with their meters which directly lead to load reduction and transformer failures.
▪ There are materials theft on Eskom sites, mainly transformers, airdac, and meters.
▪ Community interference in projects, which delay the progress.
▪ Communities purchase and connect illegal transformers on to an Eskom grid. Money is collected to purchase illegal transformers and pay a contractor for the installation instead of using that money to pay tamper fines.
▪ Community members illegally move themselves onto another transformer.
▪ Community members purchase secondary meters and pay their own electricians to illegally connect to Eskom Grid instead of paying the tamper fine.
▪ Community members opting to connect directly to Eskom without any meter (direct connection), which poses a safety risk.
Eskom plans to implement a five-year plan to audit and normalise all meter bypasses and meter failures in KZN.
The power utility is implementing tracking of smart meters to detect customers regressing to zero buying and action with audits.
zainul.dawood@inl.co.za