The legality of BCMM mayor Princess Faku’s electricity meter amnesty deal announced last week is being called into question given the deal contravenes the city’s electricity supply bylaw and will place financial strain on paying consumers.
On February 9, the mayor announced the city would be implementing an amnesty deal that pardon’s residents who were stealing electricity by tampering with their meter boxes. The deal would call for residents to come forward, admit their actions and then the city would replace their tampered meter with a new one in hopes the residents would start paying.
The meter would be replaced at no cost to the consumer and the money owed would be written off.
The mayor said the amnesty deal would run for six months and residents who failed to come forward would pay a R10,000-R15,000 fine.
Despite this, the electricity supply bylaw for BCM dictates that any person who without legal right abstracts, branches off or diverts any electric current, and/or consumes this unlawful supply, shall be guilty of an offence of tampering with the municipality’s electrical network and a tampering fee and even jail time may be imposed.
DA councillor Geoff Walton said if the mayor’s plan was approved at the February council meeting, it would be an abuse of power and that would mean amending the bylaw.
The mayor said this plan would assist the municipality with revenue collection by appealing to the conscience of those who were stealing electricity, however Walton believes this is naive and unfair on law-abiding consumers who diligently paid their accounts and who will likely bear the brunt of monies written off.
Walton said: “The idea that where consumers have tampered with municipal equipment and possibly caused damage thereto, can simply be excused, is not palatable.
“The offenders broke the electricity bylaw and the penalty amount is substantial to serve as a deterrent.
“Those who bypassed their meters knew exactly what they were doing, and one doubts they would somehow be obligated now to pay. Many others also stepped outside the rules, and they suffered the consequences.
“The city is facing severe financial pressure, and the municipality should rather identify consumers who tampered and take strict action against them. There is no reason to go easy on these consumers and then be harsh with those who have slipped into arrears due to unfortunate circumstances.”
Attorney for Niehaus MacMahon Brandon Blignaut said the mayor’s proposed deal would only make sense in the context that a group of offenders had been caught and were awaiting trial and prosecution.
Blignaut said the impetus of the mayor’s plan should be on strengthening prosecution to make an example of offenders and taking steps to collect evidence in the form of eyewitness accounts, photographic and video evidence to assist with successful convictions, as in the last two years, only one person has been successfully prosecuted for municipal damage.
In 2022, Afesis-Corplan and BCMM entered into an MOA to implement a re-blocking programme in Scenery Park that would entail creating wide enough paths and roads within informal settlements to safely and efficiently put in electrical poles and wires.
It is a slower process as it will require households to shift and move but once implemented, will go along way towards improving revenue collection rates for services from these communities.
The C-19 informal settlement community on the outskirts of East London said they were relying on illegal connections for power, but this resulted in fights between themselves and the neighbouring RDP homes.
The community said it was willing to pay for services and wanted the municipality to include them in re-blocking programmes. There are 136 households and the community said without power they were not able to buy food or effectively store medicines.
One C-19 resident said: “We are willing to pay for the electricity because we tired of struggling. We are considered as people who are not supposed to have electricity because we live in an informal settlement and people just assume that we want to do illegal connections but that is not true.
“We want the municipality to install boxes so that we can have services.”
