Polokwane’s new smart meter system

The municipality said the programme was approved by National Treasury and a selected service provider would install the meter system and bill residents.

The council announced the news in a media briefing late on Thursday, calling residents to ensure that they help pave the way for the smart card system by participating in the council’s debt review system.

“We have adopted smart card as the city and we are beginning on April 1 with the smart card system, then we will outgrow the issue of billing the wrong meter,” executive mayor Thembi Nkadimeng told a media briefing in Polokwane.

The installation of the smart card system came after the council announced that it was writing off residents’ debts in Mankweng and other townships.

Nkadimeng said the new system would be user friendly for both the municipality and communities and would enable consumers to buy and use electricity and water as opposed to utilising the resources and being billed later.

According to Nkadimeng, the plan to conduct debt reviews in its township and surrounding areas proclaimed by municipality was considered because council accepted the failure of its system.

“We don’t want to issue smart cards with debts – we want to give out smart card with no debts, and we acknowledge that our system is faulty,” Nkadimeng said.

Nkadimeng said her office continued to receive complaints from residents who had received exorbitant bills.

The council’s officials have been cutting and issuing letters threatening to cut off water and electricity for defaulting residents, but many have questioned their actions and derided them, saying they were ill-informed about the billing system.

Nkadimeng said the introduction of the smart meter system would also help the council to collect revenue.

However, she said that the council’s intention was to see all households that fall under the Polokwane municipal jurisdiction to have the meter system installed in their homes by 2022.

The old system depended on the supervision of someone, while the smart system balances what users buy in advance, and while it had yet to be introduced, the system was due to operate autonomously.

The Polokwane billing system crisis started in 2009 and saw council debtors book loaded with a whopping R700 million in unserviced debts.