Residents still paying R200 surcharge despite council's decision to review it

City Power says a decision to revoke has to go to council and be ratified

While City of Johannesburg finance MMC Dada Morero told councillors the executive had decided to review the implementation of a R200 monthly surcharge on prepaid electricity, that doesn't mean residents are not paying it. 

Speaking in a special council meeting on Tuesday, Morero said the mayoral committee decided to review the controversial fee after being inundated with complaints from residents.

On Wednesday City Power said the R200 surcharge, which came into effect on July 1, was still being paid by prepaid customers.

The electricity entity's spokesperson Isaac Mangena said whenever prepaid customers bought electricity units, they paid a certain portion to City Power towards that R200, especially if they bought below the R400 threshold.

“Especially if they bought about the R400 threshold, R200 would have been paid, if they bought lower then a portion of that money will go to the R200, which means they will still owe us,” he said.

He added the entity had not been told “otherwise”. He said if there was any decision to revoke the surcharge, it had to go through the correct channels. 

“It will have to go through the council, so the council can decide on that, but so far we haven’t received any communication from the council to the contrary. So as things stand, the R200 is still being charged to prepaid customers and postpaid [customers] still continue to pay the service charge and the network charge,” he said.

Mangena said the National Energy Regulator of South Africa and the council approved the R200 charge.   

“So we are still continuing in that fashion. For it to be revoked it will have to go through those channels and we can obviously abide by those,” he said.   

Morero said the council would still have to deliberate on the process it would follow to review the implementation of the policy.

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