Eskom has added 400,000 freeloaders to its revenue stream following its nationwide prepaid electricity meter rollover.
In an update on its upgrade process, Eskom said yesterday that not only did it manage to convert thousands of “zero buyers” to paying customers, but it also managed to update its prepaid customer base, which now stood at 7.25 million meters.
It said as of 24 November—the deadline to upgrade outdated prepaid meters - a total of 5.5 million customers, including the 400,000 ‘zero buyers’, have completed the rollover and are transacting on the new KRN2 system.
“Zero buyers” typically do not buy krag through legitimate channels, but rather use ghost vendors or bypass or tamper with their meters.
Eskom said it has added 400,000 new paying customers, while decreasing the ‘zero buyer’ numbers from a 12-month average of 2.1 million to 1.7 million, with further outreach ongoing.
The roll-out also helped improve its customer database, saying “data cleaning added 341,000 customers to Eskom’s records”.
It said customers still sukkeling with the new system now have until 13 December 2024 to rectify their meters, including those with tampered meters.
In such cases, tamper fines will be issued where applicable and meter updates and replacements will then be scheduled.