The move to higher lockdown level amid the Covid-19 third wave is expected to exacerbate the long-standing street lighting fiasco in the City of Ekurhuleni.
The metro announced this week deprioritising dysfunctional street lights is among the changes brought by the adjusted lockdown level four in the City.
The energy department will, however, strive to continue prioritising power outage complaints, and attend to defective streetlights in main roads and those that were reported before the onset of level four.
According to metro spokesperson Zweli Dlamini, the changes are as a result of the limited staff complement in the energy department.
“Under lockdown level four regulations promulgated under the Disaster Management Act 57 of 2002 and the impact of Covid-19, the City is reducing staff complement in the energy department.
“Therefore, the City will strive to attend to 90% of outage complaints within 48hours and the rest within a reasonable time. Street lights will not be prioritised due to the limited number of personnel during this period,” explained Dlamini.
Customers are encouraged to still log streetlight-related queries at the call centre or via the My CoE App.
Poor maintenance
The City’s energy department has for many years been under mounting criticism for allegedly turning a blind eye to defective street lights complaints citywide.
The scores of complaints by community leaders and ordinary citizens indicate that street lighting outages are part of an ongoing problem being faced by the metro for years.
Residents have been raising the alarm on poor streetlights maintenance, delays in replacing vandalised lights and inconsistent street light scheduling as some lights burn all day and night while others stay off for days on end.
In a recent interview with the Advertiser, Ward 32 Clr Marius de Vos called the trend a chronic problem that needs urgent attention. He pointed out that leaving lights to burn all day and night is a waste of electricity, and described the failure to fix dark lights as aiding and abetting illegal activities, especially in known crime hot spots.
However, according to the metro, street lights use either LED lights or a gas vapour that are ignited and use very little power to stay on.
The electricity consumption of the street lights that are on during the day is less than 0.3% of the total electricity consumption and therefore negligible compared against overall electricity consumption.
The metro recently explained the issue of lights turning on when they shouldn’t have been is most likely to have been caused by faulty photocell which does not switch off during daylight conditions.
Other possible causes are:
• Teams are doing maintenance on street light sections.
• Lights were left on during the day for construction purposes, as this makes it easier to identify damage to cables.
• The department is providing a temporary supply from the street lights to a customer until a faulty service connection can be repaired.
• The department could have purposefully left a circuit on to curb theft of street light cables in an identified hot spot.
Also Read: Fixing faulty street lights proves a challenge in Ekurhuleni
