Eskom says it has outstanding debt of R52 billion from unpaid electricity bills

Eskom says it has outstanding debt of R52 billion emerging from unpaid electricity bills. Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer says the power utility has continued to see better performance on all its systems but faces challenges on its generation capacity side.

At the end of October, Eskom says its distribution department had an outstanding debt exceeding R52 billion from unpaid bills.

It says illegal connections are also overloading its network.

The power utility says it has maintained healthy coal stock for 30 days but still faces challenges with coal quality

“Generation side remains a concern specifically the coal fleet and energy level is way below our target of 65 percent and we are standing at 58.53% year to date, so really it is not good performance and its something we are working hard,” says Oberholzer.

Eskom says vandalism and theft is beginning to play a significant challenge on its networks and all its divisions. Oberholzer says copper theft is also becoming a serious problem.  He was addressing the media on Eskom’s state of the system and company’s operational performance earlier today

“We do have on electrical network where people tend to decide to come and steal the copper come and steal, and actually sell it for so much less than what it’s worth. And then leaving a risk behind. It is actually amazing that somebody can look at the steel tower and see some bait and then go and steal those members and make beds and sell beds out of it. So we do have some real challenge,” Oberholzer added.