Prepaid meter furore — More proof that the government and Eskom just don’t get it

The background to the prepaid meter issue is well known; essentially the system that issues codes to refill electricity meters (which are tied to the date and time) was going to run out of numbers at 20:15 on Sunday night, 24 November 2024. As a result, these meters had to have particular codes tapped into them to allow them to continue.

On paper, this is incredibly simple. The process takes less than a minute, and there were many months in which to do it. Even for a society that includes many people who have grown up without cellphones, it should not have been a problem.

Most elderly people have at least one younger person in their lives who would have been able to help them with this process. Instead, the result was long queues, a sense of panic, and in Soweto, one reported death.

None of this needed to happen, it was all avoidable.

The root cause of the feelings of panic was the threat from Eskom and others that if the meter was not updated, it would cost the consumer R12,000 to have it replaced.

This was always nonsense. 

As important reporting by News24 revealed, the authority that runs the software standard, the Standard Transfer Specification Association, said that meters would not have to be replaced.

The SA Local Government Association, representing local councils, made the same point. And it is still not clear how such a simple device could ever cost so much.

This means then that Eskom’s threat had no basis. And it was repeated many times by many people. 

One of those who repeated the Eskom message was the Minister of Electricity and Energy, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa. He spoke in public and gave interviews in which he repeated the same message.

Why would Eskom, and others, make this threat, if it simply was not true?

The only legitimate reason might be that Eskom was trying to get as many people as possible to update their meters, in an effort to find out which meters were involved in bypassing the payment system entirely.

In other words, some at Eskom might have seen this as a useful opportunity to crack down on non-payment.

Unfortunately, the net result of all of this is that there is going to be less trust in the system, with the result that fewer may end up paying than before.

This is because if it turns out that meters can be made to work after Sunday’s deadline, then Eskom will have been revealed to have lied.

And the spectre of the figure of R12,000 was an important part of this. As the meters are clearly not worth that, it would appear that either Eskom and councils were adding administrative fees, or were trying to recover some other costs.

Unfortunately the net result of all of this is that there is going to be less trust in the system, with the result that fewer may end up paying than before.

The simple fact of our current existence is that electricity is vital to people, and thus they will do anything to get it.

Price hikes in question

Power disconnect