Pretoria — All prepaid electricity customers in Ekurhuleni are now able to purchase electricity both through third party vendors and at the municipal offices, following the recovery of the IT system that went down on Sunday evening.

The Metropolitan Municipality said the metro experienced the collapse of the Data Centre in Germiston, which in turn affected all services that relied on the municipal server.

"Our online platforms such as the financial system for the selling of pre-paid electricity, the issuing of duplicate statements, email capability and the emergency call taking centre were all affected," metro's spokesperson, Sam Modiba said.

He said by late Tuesday morning the municipality had partially restored prepaid electricity services.

"[On Thursday] we managed to bring all services back and we are currently running a thorough diagnosis to determine the cause in order to ensure that we do not experience a similar situation in the future," Modiba said.

The metro has commended its technicians for responding with "utmost efficiency and extends gratitude to the ratepayers for the patience exercised while we worked on the problem".