Tens of thousands of prepaid electricity users scrambled to meet the 24 November deadline for Eskom’s Token Identification (TID) Rollover project, with one death reported in Orlando, Soweto.
Three days before the deadline, hundreds of people queued at Eskom offices in Soweto seeking help to upgrade their prepaid meters, stay on the grid and avoid heavy costs. About two million of the 6.9 million Eskom prepaid meters across South Africa had not yet been upgraded.
Soweto resident Mlungisi Gumede (33), who queued with hundreds of people at the Orlando East Community Hall on Thursday last week, expressed shock after witnessing a man die in the queue.
“I was standing a few metres away and suddenly saw a man fall from a chair,” said Gumede. “We initially thought he had just fainted.”
Gumede joined the queue at 4am and said the man who died arrived at a similar time. There were hundreds of people in front of them.
“He was in the 400s in the queue. You can imagine then if someone who was here so early was in the 400s…. It means many people slept here,” said Gumede.
SowetanLIVE reported that the dead man was 59-year-old Joseph Fikile Busakwe, who was in the queue to get his prepaid meter upgraded.
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(Photo: Gallo Images / Fani Mahuntsi)
