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The Western Cape Government has warned citizens that they only have 200 days left to update their water and pre-paid electricity meters “before they stop working on 24 November 2024.”

The update is urgently required because the standard system that provides unique recharge codes will soon run out of unique numbers to issue.

A ‘reset’ code for each pre-paid meter is therefore needed to ensure that residents can continue receiving unique codes beyond 24 November 2024. This can be simply entered into the meter in the same way that normal recharge voucher codes are entered.

Western Cape, Provincial Minister of Finance and Economic Opportunities, Mireille Wenger issued the warning, saying, “We are making steady progress in the switch over of pre-paid water and electricity meters in the Western Cape, but now is the time to ramp up efforts to complete the process to avoid disaster come 24 November 2024”.

“If we don’t, it will be equivalent to load-shedding on steroids for thousands of homes and businesses.”

There are an estimated 1,047,682 municipal meters in the province, and as of 30 April, approximately 88.1% have been updated, up from 82.5% at the beginning of April this year.

Failure to complete the reset will leave residents unable to buy electricity and municipalities unable to generate revenue from the sale of prepaid electricity or water.

Used by over 500 power utilities across the world, the Standard Transfer Specification (STS) is the primary global standard protocol for the transfer of electricity and other utility prepayment tokens. According to the STS Association, there are approximately 10 million STS meters in South Africa, 7 million of which are in Eskom service areas, and 3 million in municipal service areas.

“The Provincial Treasury has gathered all the contact details for the relevant official in each municipality so residents are able to contact them with any queries they may have” continued Minister Wenger.

“I’d like to strongly urge our municipalities that have yet to complete the process to urgently do so. It is critical that we work together to avoid the looming pre-paid meter black-out, providing certainty and continued service delivery to households and businesses.”

For more information on updating your meter, you can find contact details for your local municipality on this link.

[source:westerncape.gov]