By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The agency in charge of public power supply to the Nigerian Consulate in South Africa, the Johannesburg City Power has thrown the foreign mission into darkness after disconnecting it from power source over a backlog of unpaid energy bills.
Report says the consulate had denied the City Power access to its premises to effect the disconnection, a situation that left the company with the option of involving the Metro Police Department for the enforcement.
“The Nigerian Consulate-General has been defaulting since last year, but they promised to clear up the bill by January after the disconnection.
“The consul-general visited our Service Delivery Centre in Alexandra, and agreed to pay the deposit, with the rest to be paid by the end of the month,” said Mangena.
“The same with The Catalyst Hotel, even though we realised that the hotel had lodged some queries on the debt, which we will be attending to. However, they paid R400, 000 and were reconnected and we will proceed to address their query”, a local news platform, the IOL on Wednesday, quoted the City Power spokesperson, Isaac Mangena, as saying,
“Power was restored late afternoon after the arrangement was made. They owed over R400, 000, and they put up a R150,000 deposit,” he stated further.
The utility company has intensified efforts to enforce payment by disconnecting customers, whose municipal accounts are in arrears with a particular interest on churches and other business entities.
Efforts by Heritage Times HT to get an official statement from the consulate was unsuccessful as several email messages went unrepli
