Delville resident Petro Grabe was recently left without power for six days forcing her to use a generator.

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As a result, her home equipment and security system were affected. She said the generator cost her R800 per day.

Grabe said the City of Ekurhuleni (CoE) is fighting a losing battle when it comes to keeping residents’ lights on.

“On June 2 my power went off at about 18:00. The next morning I started contacting the city officials and no one came back to me with answers,” said Grabe.

“I am working from home. I have contracts to complete and submit. Generators are noisy and the fuel is expensive,” said Grabe.

“My laundry is not done. My fridges and alarm system are starting to have problems. Who is going to replace the food I have in the fridge? My daughter has to study for her exams before going to bed. How is she supposed to do that in the dark?”

“The CoE is too quick to disconnect you when you don’t make a payment on time.

“We expect them to extend us the same courtesy of having our power fixed within the regulated turnaround time,” said Grabe.

Ward 39 Clr Jean Ingram said she escalated Grabe’s complaint to the Department of Energy.

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She said Delville was experiencing an outage at the time.

On June 9, Grabe told GCN that her power was restored on June 8 at 18:00, two hours after launching telephone complaints to the Germiston customer care centre.

GCN sent a request for comment to City of Ekurhuleni and a comment was requested by June 9.

At the time of going to print GCN had not received any comment.