…Over 200 000 still need to reset
BY DELISA THWALA
MBABANE – Eswatini Electricity Company (EEC) has announced that nearly after a month, 10 000 people have reseted their metres.
This comes after ECC’s Managing Director Ernest Mkhonta held a press briefing where he officially launched the Token Identifier (TID) Rollover.
Mkhonta said he was delighted to launch something in line with their strategic objectives to improve customer convenience and align themselves to changes taking place in the field.
“We are also excited that we will be able to dismantle misinformation that has been peddled through various platforms regarding the Token Identifier Rollover project. We have noted with great concern reports carried out in some publications that have been further from the truth and if anything has caused panic for our customers.
Now a month later, EEC’s Communication Officer Khaya Mavuso said the response by emaSwati has been significant and they are happy.
“We still need the 200,000 people to change their metre numbers because by next September it will have expired. He further encouraged people to change and reset their metre,” said Mavuso.
He further said they have read stories about a supposed blackout that will affect all prepaid clients in 2024 and have heard of allegations that this is an attempt by the company to consume units loaded by clients fast. All these narratives are just misconceptions that we hope after today will be cleared.
In addition, he said they relied on customers and esteemed stakeholders, to help them clear the air and bring ease and calm to customers.
The Token Identifier Rollover is ongoing in all countries that use prepaid metres, so it is not a drive unique to Eswatini Electricity Company Eswatini.
“If you check our neighbours all over the Southern African Region are busy with the same project. In essence, all prepaid metres regardless of where you are residing must be aligned through metre resetting to the system of the service provider.”
“In November 2024, the prepayment system that service providers are using will roll over, that is, it will reset itself and have a new base date,” he said.
The current base date is 1993 and each base date has a life span not exceeding 31.6 years, so the end of the current one is November 24, 2024. So, the consequence of this happening is that we must in turn reset the metres of our customers so that their metres are able to recognize the tokens generated by our system after November 2024,” he explained.
Mavuso further said people must understand that token generation is two-fold; When a customer buys tokens (units) they give the vendor their metre number, which allows the system to generate a token that can only be read by that specific metre.
The customers’ metre identifies the token generated for it through a token identity number which is then stored in the metre memory. So, what will happen now, is that unreset metres will reject tokens generated after the new base date. Therefore, we need to wipe out the memory of their metres so that they can accept tokens generated moving forward.
“This entire process will need to key change tokens that only we can generate and will be completely free to our customers. We pride ourselves in being a technologically forward company and we continue to embrace technology which is why we have decided to allow our customers to do this process for themselves at their convenience,” he said
EEC has included the option to generate one’s own key change tokens on their USSD platform.
What you do is dial *8888# choose option 7 (TID Rollover) and follow the prompts. The two tokens that will be generated for you are the ones you will use to reset your metre. Customers must follow the sequence of the tokens and make sure that they have loaded all bought units before resetting.
