Ekurhuleni provided its customers with a load shedding schedule on its website after the municipality was forced to implement electricity cuts on Friday, but certain suburbs were not affected in line with the schedule.
The City Times asked readers on its Facebook page to mentioned whether they were cut according to the schedule.
Here are some of the commets left on Facebook:
n Justine Candi Bocher, of Lakefield, said she experienced load shedding at 6pm on Sunday, although the schedule said it would take place from 9pm until midnight.
n Graham Wonfor, from Airfield, said on Sunday that his suburb was hit at the Crystal Park time.
n Sean Ogilvie, of Lakefield, said it was nowhere close.
n Nellie van Rensburg, of Northmead, said electricity went off on Saturday from 9.20am until 12.20pm, but it should have been off from 3pm until 6pm.
Despite the complaints, there were a number of people who said load shedding was conducted according to the schedule.
Ekurhuleni said load shedding was carried out as per the schedules.
“The EMM’s Energy Department does manual switching off and on of power supply to the various areas and thus this may cause a time variance,” said spokesperson Themba Gadebe.
“For instance, instead of the power being switched off at exactly 9am it is switched off at 9.30am.
“The load reduction exercise is being conducted as per the schedules available on the EMM’s website, in areas that are supplied directly by the municipality.”
More complaints surfaced from people questioning why their homes should be hit by load shedding twice in a day.
A Brentwood Park resident, who did not want to be named, told the City Times that the most highly affected suburb in Kempton Park experiences significantly less hours of load shedding a month compared to Benoni’s biggest affected area.
When asked why this was the case, Gadebe said: “Load shedding schedules are guided by the electricity network configurations and these configurations differ from area to area and cannot be compared.”
Clr Mary Goby said she received numerous calls from residents complaining about street lights that continue to burn while the public is asked to reduce electricity consumption.
She said these lights run on relays (or timers) and when the power is cut and comes back on, the lights stay on the complete the cycle left on the relay.
She also had complaints about little or no water when there is load shedding.
Goby said this is the result of a reservoir pumping water at a slower rate, as it runs off a generator when the electricity is off.
The metro apologised to residents for this inconvenience.
