Ward 17 councillor Simon Lapping said the electricity issues in the city is due to the chronically understaffed metro energy department, a problem which has been in existence for the past 17 years.
According to Lapping, over the last two weeks, the Ekurhuleni Energy Department has seemingly decided unilaterally not to attend to emergencies where residents have no power, and the problem stems from serious staff shortages and a long-running dispute between the employer and employee over working conditions.
“DA in Ekurhuleni has been in contact with officials who indicated the standby teams employed to attend to these outages refuse to work as they are not being paid overtime for work above the 40 hours per month as per the government legislation.
“This essentially means once the officials have reached their overtime ‘cap’, some allegedly refuse to work. Worryingly, the City does absolutely nothing to rectify this issue or ensure this doesn’t happen again. In the meantime, ratepayers are then forced to live without electricity,” explained Lapping.
Lapping pointed out that in 2003, the National Energy Regulators Audit stated 1 600 qualified personnel had to be employed for the city to reach minimum standards.
However, according to the councillor, the city has roughly 890 qualified staff working in the energy department, pointing towards 710 short, or 45 per cent understaffed, as per the stipulated 2003 requirement.
Chances are the minimum number of electricians required to meet the demand have increased dramatically, but the metro can’t even match the 2003 minimum requirement.
“No wonder the staff we have are expected to work to the bone in the early hours of the morning and then not get paid for it, and thus down tools when expected to carry on.
“Since 2003, an extra 300 000 houses were electrified, Palm Ridge alone accounted for 40 000 new homes being electrified.
As demand becomes greater and coupled with Eskom’s electrical woes, one would expect staff complement in the energy department to increase. Sadly, it has decreased over the years.
“Residents must just suffer in darkness as this administration is hell-bent on ensuring basic services like maintenance are curtailed.
“Just recently, Croydon suffered an area blackout and this week, streets in Cresslawn waited three days before a technician arrived to assess the situation, and that albeit only after putting pressure on the city manager to act.
“It is time for residents to take back their power,” said Lapping.
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