Johannesburg – Power utility Eskom does not owe the City of Tshwane R1bn in unpaid municipal services, it said on Friday.

The statement comes after a fake twitter profile, @CityTswane, took to social media to mimic the City of Tshwane – whose office social media handle on Twitter is @CityTshwane.

The fake account’s tweet had garnered over 1 000 retweets and responses by the time of publication.

The fake social media account purported it was set to cut services at Eskom’s Megawatt Park headquarters, which are based in Sandton, well outside the City of Tshwane’s jurisdiction.

Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Matshantsha said Eskom did not owe any municipality money in an Eskom Media WhatsApp group on Friday.

“Fake news: Eskom’s Megawatt Park office is in Johannesburg, and does not owe any unpaid debt to any municipality,” he said.

The City of Tshwane has been on a “name and shame” campaign, disclosing big businesses, government departments and state owned businesses, who owe the municipality millions in unpaid municipal services, including water, electricity and property rates.

At the start of the campaign, the City of Tshwane said it was on a major campaign drive to recover a sizable portion of the R17bn owed to it by the businesses, government entities and private residents.

The City of Tshwane has collected at least R300m so far.

The City of Johannesburg has since started issuing companies and government departments with letters, calling on them to make payment within 14 days or they could face services being cut too.

Courtesy of IOL