About 60 000 SEC customers face darkness

MBABANE – Around 60 000 Swaziland Electricity Company (SEC) prepaid customers will be in the dark next Saturday if they fail to update their particulars with the company.

Sifiso Dhlamini, the company’s Corporate Communications Manager, said SEC was in the process of upgrading its system in order to enhance service delivery, and without updated personal data of every prepaid customer, it will be impossible to load new electricity units. Dhlamini said by updating the personal particulars, certain irregularities, such as meter numbers that did not match with current users will be corrected. Also, SEC will be able to send bulk SMSes to communities informing them of planned outages for maintenance purposes.

“We’ve been issuing notices about updating one’s personal information since the beginning of July, but the response rate of many prepaid customers has been very slow, yet time is fast running out. Prepaid customers are in the region of 122 000, but only 50 per cent have updated their particulars,” explained Dhlamini.

Customers are required to fill in a form obtainable at any SEC branch or their website providing details of their national ID numbers, residential addresses, contact numbers and meter numbers. It will then be entered into the company’s data base under the new system. The prepayment system itself will be upgraded to a 3E system and also be linked to the distribution and management system and the Customer Relations Management (CRM) system. Dhlamini said the result of this will be improved responses to faults and outages and direct communication with customers.

Nevertheless, Dhlamini expressed concern that it appeared that customers procrastinated fulfilling the company’s requirement, which was going to be a serious problem if done at the last minute.
“It could jeopardise the normal operation schedule of the company,” he said.

Upgrading customer particulars can be done via SEC’s call centre line 800 9000, visiting any of the company offices countrywide or online at www.sec.co.sz.

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