Eskom Disconnecting, Fining Users With Illegal Connections

Power utility Eskom says it has been disconnecting and fining non-compliant electricity users and community members who have illegal connections.

This follows the utilitys recoding process for pre-paid meter users which took place last month.

Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena says while hundreds of thousands of users have since complied, there are still scores who are yet to pay the R6 000 fine.

This issue of energy theft, where we are currently - we started with consumers that were illegally consuming electricity. We started with a number of about 2.2 million - and with the KRN, these consumers showed themselves up and we managed to get about 400 000 people that started buying. So, were sitting at about 1.7 million customers currently that are illegally connected or consuming electricity illegally.

The power utility says illegal connections and electricity theft burden transformer loads.