Former mayor's company to help curb electricity theft in Nelson Mandela Bay

01 Feb 2016 | Admin Author

The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality has appointed service provider AMAT, to develop strategies to curb electricity theft which is costing the Metro millions in revenue.

At a media briefing on Friday, the municipality stated they would aim for a R50 million reduction annually for the next three years with regards to electricity losses.

The Portfolio Committee chairperson for Budget and Treasury, Balu Naran, says R80 million a year is lost to cable theft and illegal electricity connections.

"R218 million losses in the last financial year ending June 2014 translates into technical and non-technical losses, of the non-technical losses is 30% of the actual losses in the tune of R80 million is lost to cable theft and theft of illegal connection. The other 70% is due to aging infrastructure." says Naran.

AMAT Director and former Nelson Mandela Bay Mayor Nceba Faku, says the company will use a systems engineering approach and has employed 22 field employees to do house visits

CEO, Mthu Ntlangani, says their field teams will be visiting all the houses and business to check on the health the metres.

"They will be testing the meter whether it is calculating consumption the way its suppose to be. We will be doing random checks, we've analyzed that statistically in terms of profiling that if a house in a certain area should be using a certain range and if there is a deviation we need to go investigate."