Cape Town - Millions of rands' worth of prepaid electricity units have been sold illegally, according to a written Parliamentary answer circulated on Wednesday.
Democratic Alliance MP Manie van Dyk asked the Minister for Public Enterprises how many electricity credit-dispensing machines there are and how many have been stolen, and what the loss to Eskom was.
The minister, who was Alec Erwin until last Thursday, but is now Brigitte Mabandla, replied that there were 1 800 of the credit-dispensing units (CDUs) and 52 have been stolen in the past three years. Eleven of those have been recovered.
"From the recovered CDUs, some indicate that millions of rands of pre- paid electricity units have been sold," the minister said, adding that it is not possible to quantify the full monetary loss.
The minister explained that the units were designed to operate independently because remote data communications were not available 20 years ago when Eskom started vending.
Safety features
"Although safety features were built in over time, illegal manipulation of stolen CDUs can result in ongoing vending until the equipment physically fails," Van Dyk was told.
"Eskom has moved to a much more secure online vending system, and is busy closing most offline CDUs, thus removing any future risk of misuse and financial losses."
The minister said that forensic investigations conducted in the past have linked some Eskom staff to this theft, with resultant disciplinary measures taken against the employees in question.
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