Councillors and City Power meet amid power outages
“We agreed that we will all monitor the situation and we are going to now have these meetings on a monthly basis,” said Crichton.
Councillors Michael Crichton, Stuart Marais, Rashieda Landis, Faeeza Chame and Tyrell Meyers met with the City Power depot manager and his team leaders on June 24 to discuss the recent spate of power outages.
They discussed the concerns of the recent power outages and the following outcomes were agreed to:
• Illegal connections are overloading the grid and causing the chambers to trip.
• City Power is in the process of gathering data of all the houses that have illegal connections.
• The people who have illegal connections will be issued with letters informing them that they have to go to City Power to apply for an upgrade that will come at a cost and they will become paying customers.
• If they fail to comply with this letter, which will have a time frame, they will be disconnected and possibly prosecuted.
• Both the City Power officials and the councillors will be engaging with JMPD and SAPS to see what strategies they can come up with to combat cable theft.
• Scrap yards that are buying stolen cables need to be investigated.
• In light of the fact that certain contractors appear to be operating in an underhanded manner, community members have the right to ask them for their job card
“We agreed that we will all monitor the situation and we are going to now have these meetings on a monthly basis,” said Crichton.
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