The City of Cape Town says its prepaid electricity meter updates are done and its customers are not impacted by Eskom’s deadline next week.
South Africans who fail to recode their prepaid meters before the November 24 deadline may be forced to get a new meter that could cost them as much as R12,000, IOL reported.
With two days remaining until the deadline, Eskom is urging all prepaid electricity customers to update their meters immediately to avoid their power being off.
The state utility said that meters still using KRN1 (Key Revision Number 1) will no longer accept electricity tokens after Sunday.
“This means that once your current credit is depleted, you will lose power, and the meter will become inoperable, necessitating a meter replacement that could cost up to R12,000, which the customer will have to pay,” Eskom said.
“Customers with meters still on KRN1 have likely not purchased electricity for more than six months or might be using unauthorised tokens bought from criminal syndicates,” Monde Bala, Eskom’s group executive for Distribution said.
These customers are urged to buy electricity tokens from authorised vendors by Sunday.
“This will provide them with two sets of 20-digit codes needed to recode and update their meters,” he added.
Meanwhile the City says all of its approximately 570 000 prepaid meters have been updated over the last three years.
City-supplied customers who are uncertain of their software update from KRN1 to KRN2 are able to check by simply entering the code 1844 6744 0738 4377 2416 on their prepaid meter’s keypad.
The screen will display one of two messages:
· “1” means the update is required
· “2” means the meter has already been updated
On Thursday, a Soweto man who had been queuing at the Orlando East Communal Hall in a bid to upgrade his meter died, while waiting to be assisted along with over 500 others.
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