South African power utility Eskom on Monday suspended its planned supply interruption to the Govan Mbeki local municipality in Mpumalanga after it reached a payment agreement with the municipality.

This comes after Eskom started cutting the power supply to Govan Mbeki Local municipality from Monday last week and affecting areas such as Secunda, Embalenhle, Bethal, and Emzinoni as the municipality was over half a billion rand in arrears. The local municipality is situated under the Gert Sibande District Municipality.

Eskom spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe said the Govan Mbeki Local municipality honoured its obligation in terms of the agreed minimum payment received to enable the negotiation of the repayment plan for the remaining balance.

“An agreement was reached today at 6am with the municipality. Goven Mbeki local municipality owed Eskom over R500-million. Even though I am not going to say how much they paid today, they made a substantial amount of payment,” Phasiwe said.

“What is left now is that we have to enter into agreement with them on how much monthly payments are they going to make to settle the outstanding balance. But as from 5pm this evening, Eskom will stop power interruptions to the municipality.”

Eskom said that should the municipalities deviate from the new payment agreements, electricity interruptions will be implemented without notice.

“Eskom remains mindful of the impact such supply interruptions will have on electricity consumers, thus the interruption of supply to municipalities for non-payment is always implemented as a last resort,” Eskom said in a statement.