{"id":149053,"date":"2017-01-05T11:54:29","date_gmt":"2017-01-05T09:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=149053"},"modified":"2017-01-05T11:54:29","modified_gmt":"2017-01-05T09:54:29","slug":"court-gives-eskom-the-go-ahead-to-cut-off-power-to-indebted-municipalities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/149053\/court-gives-eskom-the-go-ahead-to-cut-off-power-to-indebted-municipalities\/","title":{"rendered":"Court gives Eskom the go-ahead to cut off power to indebted municipalities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The North Gauteng High Court has ruled that Eskom is allowed to cut power to ten municipalities which have failed to pay the billions of rands of debt owed to the power utility.<\/p>\n<p>A case was brought by civil rights group AfriForum, trying to block Eskom from cutting the power to the municipalities, saying that the move would be unfair to rate payers who have been paying,<\/p>\n<p>However, the court has dismissed AfriForum&#8217;s case (with costs), saying that municipalities must be held accountable for the unpaid amounts, and that the right of consumers cannot overrule Eskom&#8217;s right to lawfully collect debt owed to it.<\/p>\n<p>The case will continue, with AfriForum tackling the lawfulness of cutting off entire municipalities\u00a0in March, but for now, Eskom has been given the go ahead to stop services to municipalities that owe it money.<\/p>\n<p>The power cuts were to go ahead on the Thursday (5 January), but now the municipalities &#8211; found in the Free State\u00a0and North West provinces &#8211; have until 16 January to settle their accounts before being cut off.<\/p>\n<p>The seven affected municipalities in the Free State are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tokologo<\/li>\n<li>Nketoana<\/li>\n<li>Nala<\/li>\n<li>Mantsopa<\/li>\n<li>Masilonyana<\/li>\n<li>Dihlabeng, and<\/li>\n<li>Moqhaka<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The three municipalities in the North West are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Naledi,<\/li>\n<li>Mamusa, and<\/li>\n<li>Ventersdorp<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read:\u00a0<a title=\"Permalink to Eskom connects Kusile unit to the grid\" href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/148329\/eskom-connects-kusile-unit-to-the-grid\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Eskom connects Kusile unit to the grid<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The North Gauteng High Court has ruled that Eskom is allowed to cut power to ten municipalities which have failed to pay the billions of rands of debt owed to the power utility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":75316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-149053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149063,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149053\/revisions\/149063"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}