The City of Johannesburg has given businesses that owe the municipality for services until next week to pay or face electricity or water cuts. 

The city’s group finance department said it would roll out its aggressive disconnection drive affecting business customers citywide due to the millions of rand they owe.

Kgamanyane Maphologela, the department's director of customer communications, said impacted customers in the city have received pre-termination warnings.

Maphologela said businesses owe the city about R10bn while government is R500m in the red.

He said residents owe the city more than R26bn.

“The roll-out will begin some time next week as it will impact these customers at different times due to the fact that not all notices were sent out at the same time,” said Maphologela. 

He said businesses that will be cut have all received their notices.

Maphologela said the reason they're only cutting the supply from businesses in the city is because they focus on one category per campaign as they have different margins. 

“We can’t cut the government, the residents and the business that owe the city all in one go. It depends on many factors, and they have their own category and campaign that will be discussed whenever that time comes,” said Maphologela. 

“The time and effort it would take to point out and find the specific business that owes the city the most will be vast and a very excruciating process. This also referencing the residents as well,” he said. 

The municipality's power utility, City Power, this week announced that it will no longer respond to outage complaints from customers who refuse to pay their bills, including those with non-vending meters and defaulting consumers.

Maphologela warned customers of the criminal offence of illegally connecting themselves to electricity and water supply, which could lead to legal action. 

mashalek@sowetan.co.za