However, when streetlights are constantly damaged by the community through vandalism, illegal connections and cable theft, the City finds it difficult to keep up with the high demand to repeatedly fix the same streetlights,” said Nhlanhla Cebekhulu, divisional head of communications for the City of Ekurhuleni.
“This is in the context of limited government resources and rotational shift system necessitated by the pandemic. Due to these incidents of vandalism, illegal connections and cable theft, the normal seven-day turnaround to attend to streetlight queries is negatively affected.
“Furthermore, the limited staff complement prioritises attending electricity outages over fixing of streetlights which results in delays in attending to streetlights.”
The City continues to conduct regular security patrols and surveillance but they emphasise this is not sustainable without the resident’s contribution to safeguarding their electrical infrastructure.
Customers are encouraged to report all electricity-related issues through its call centre on 0860 543 000 or through My CoE App.
