Maluti-a-Phofung residents will soon have reliable electricity thanks to collaboration with Eskom.

The Gauteng High Court has ordered the Distribution Agency Agreement (DAA) between MaP and Eskom because of the municipality’s R8 billion outstanding Eskom debt. The eastern Free State municipality serves towns including Harrismith, Kestell, and Phuthaditjhaba.

The next step in implementing the agreement is to migrate MaP prepaid customers to the Eskom vending platform, allowing them to purchase electricity directly from Eskom.

“Since the distribution agreement was signed with Eskom, both the power utility and MaP have been doing a lot of work in the background,” said municipality spokesperson, Thabo Kessah.

“A joint project management office has been set up to deal with finances, HR issues, revenue collection, and technical matters. Recently, a joint operation in Kestell took place (with) public participation … to facilitate the process. Harrismith and Qwaqwa are to follow.”

‘Technical teams are on the ground assessing the work needed’

The arrangement, which is extendable for 15 years, aims to collect income, pay off MAP’s outstanding debt to Eskom, guarantee a steady supply of electricity, transfer expertise, and skills, and assist the municipality in getting back on its feet in providing electricity.

Technical teams are on the ground assessing the work needed and developing solutions for the network issues faced by the municipality.

“We believe that the distribution agreement will be of great assistance to businesses and residents in MaP because now we will start making an effort to pay for the electricity we use as we currently owe R8 billion to Eskom,” said DA Cllr Alison Oates.

“A number of factors influence the supply of electricity in MaP. To name a few: the infrastructure is exceedingly old and overloaded and this results in frequent outages, and a lot of load reduction also occurs, particularly in Qwaqwa.”

Vandalism also plays a part. For some peculiar reason, people decide to just vandalise electricity infrastructure. A recent incident put a substation out of commission for a couple of weeks, she said.

NLG Gloves, which employs more than 70 workers, has had to make the difficult decision to relocate to Carletonville. Photo: africaninsider.com

Meanwhile, a glove-making factory in Harrrismith decided to relocate to Carletonville due to constant electricity outages.

GroundUp reports the industrial glove manufacturing factory has been operating in the Tshiame community since 1993, supplying mines nearby and employing 71 workers from surrounding communities.

In August, villages in and around Harrismith, as well as the MaP Special Economic Zone, were left without power for more than a week after thousands of litres of oil were apparently stolen from the Greenland substation in Tshiame.

“The irregular supply of water and electricity has a massive impact on businesses, in Harrismith two factories have closed down and these employ about 70 people each with a dependency ratio of five to one,” said Oates.

“This means that there are almost 500 people in our area who are now food insecure because this municipality cannot supply regular electricity.”

OFM News/Zenande Mpame cg