Eskom to disclose new meters upgrade deadline on Monday

City Power to replace tampered meters at no fee

People who have not yet upgraded their prepaid electricity meters will not have their power cut off today [Monday].

However, Eskom’s Daphne Mokwena said as of today, the following would happen:

The deadline has been extended, and the new one will be announced today.

Those who have bridged their meters or have been buying from ghost vendors were expected to go buy electricity at registered suppliers for their normal household usage by 24 November 2024 and return with the slip to the Eskom offices after the deadline where they will be assisted in completing the process of recoding meters.

Offenders of meter tampering or those buying from illegal vendors will pay minimum of about R6,000 fine for bridging their meters or buying from illegal vendors before being assisted in completing the process.

No one will pay the R6,000 fine for bridging their meters before Eskom assists them upgrading their meters. They will get into a payment plan with Eskom afterwards.

Those who put their names down and also provided meter numbers while in long queues at Eskom offices should not return to the office but rather wait for an sms from the power utility where they will get information that their meters have been recoded.

On the other hand, City Power will still be able to generate the three 20-number digit tokens that are used to convert a meter from KRN1 to KRN2 despite the deadline passing.

Mangena said the extension covered customers who might have previously received the key change tokens and lost them before punching them into the meter.

It also applies to vending customers who may not have had a chance to upgrade their prepaid meters

The unconverted meters will stop loading electricity units but those customers can still visit their offices and new key change tokens will be provided to enable the upgrade. 

City Power has decided to extend the grace period for non-payment of penalty fees to November 30 and replace tampered meters at no fee. 

“City Power has deployed more teams to collect the information of all customers that are already in queues and we will arrange for their technicians to visit them to install new meters and replace those that have been tampered with.”

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