Stolen units cost Eskom
2008-10-01 10:49
Special Report
Eskom is set to seek a 34% hike in electricity tariffs, back from the 88% rise it had been considering due to the global economic slowdown, a newspaper says.
Michael Hamlyn
Cape Town - Millions of rands' worth of prepaid electricity units have been sold illegally, according to a written Parliamentary answer circulated on Wednesday.
Democratic Alliance MP Manie van Dyk asked the Minister for Public
Enterprises how many electricity credit-dispensing machines there are and
how many have been stolen, and what the loss to Eskom was.
The minister, who was Alec Erwin until last Thursday, but is now
Brigitte Mabandla, replied that there were 1 800 of the credit-dispensing
units (CDUs) and 52 have been stolen in the past three years. Eleven of
those have been recovered.
"From the recovered CDUs, some indicate that millions of rands of pre-
paid electricity units have been sold," the minister said, adding that it is
not possible to quantify the full monetary loss.
The minister explained that the units were designed to operate
independently because remote data communications were not available 20 years ago when Eskom started vending.
Safety features
"Although safety features were built in over time, illegal manipulation
of stolen CDUs can result in ongoing vending until the equipment physically
fails," Van Dyk was told.
"Eskom has moved to a much more secure online vending system, and is busy closing most offline CDUs, thus removing any future risk of misuse and financial losses."
The minister said that forensic investigations conducted in the past
have linked some Eskom staff to this theft, with resultant disciplinary
measures taken against the employees in question.
- I-Net Bridge (News24)