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The Minister of Electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramakgopa, says a bigger focus will be placed on local governments and revenue collection as outstanding debt by municipalities to the embattled Eskom, tops R64 billion.
"The issues of municipalities are going to become an area of focus," he told a media briefing on Monday.
Ramakgopa described the crippling and outstanding debt as well as illegal electrical connections as an "albatross" around the neck of local governments, which he said ultimately places strain on the distribution infrastructure of municipalities.
He said in many instances illegal connections result in the capacity of distribution infrastructure being exceeded.
Minister Ramakogopa told the briefing that several interventions are being mooted by the National Treasury which includes a conditional debt write-off for people in arrears.
He said the widespread roll-out of pre-paid meters, with approval from the public, is another intervention under consideration to address the payment and other backlogs.
Minister Ramakgopa said even besides those interventions, municipalities will still require a substantial amount of money to invest in the refurbishment and maintenance of their distribution infrastructure.
"A lot of them are finding it difficult as their revenue collection is being significantly eroded as a result of bigger questions in the economy and load shedding is a major contributor to the performance of the economy," he said.
Meanwhile, Minister Ramakgopa said over the past two weeks or so there has been a "significant and positive improvement" in the generation capacity of Eskom.
He said this improvement is a result of the ongoing work being done by Eskom's generation team.
