South African organisations have released a joint statement urging municipalities to allow customers to reset their own water and electricity prepaid meters. The token identifiers (TID) used to identify each credit token will run out of available numbers in November.

The Standard Transfer Specification (STS) Association, together with the Association of Municipal Electricity Utilities of Southern Africa (AMEU), the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), the Southern Africa Revenue Protection Association (SARPA) and Eskom have issued a statement recommending that municipal bodies implement the “customer self-service (DIY) method” of resetting the meter, whereby the consumer is handed the set of reset tokens, together with his next credit token purchase, for resetting the meter on behalf of the utility (or its appointed agent). The utility then only needs to provide help-line support to deal with problems.

“There is a pending business risk to the prepayment metering industry that requires urgent action. Current industry trends confirm that the DIY process is the quickest and most cost-effective method to execute the meter reset programme,” the associations said in a statement.

Johannesburg’s City Power adopted the DIY approach last month, allowing residents to receive and enter their reset codes.

Some meter owners may be reluctant to participate in the meter upgrade programme due to concerns that customers may have tampered with meters; these concerns should be shelved until the upgrade is successfully completed. The organisations recommend that revenue protection activities occur after the reset programme is completed.

Consumers who have tampered with their meters may be reluctant to participate in the reset programme, preventing access to staff. “We recommend that revenue protection activities not be performed simultaneously with the meter reset programme. Instead, they should be delayed until after the reset programme has been completed,” the associations said.