Members of the DA held a virtual press briefing on Zoom on Tuesday to launch their Take Back Your Power campaign in response to the continuous power outages in Ekurhuleni.
Germiston is just one of the areas in Ekurhuleni which is hit hard by almost daily power outages.
Present at the meeting were Michele Clarke MP (DA Germiston constituency head), Mike Waters MP (Kempvale constituency head), Ashor Sarupen MP (Springs, Nigel and Brakpan constituency head), Ghaleb Cachalia MP (KwaThema and Duduza constituency head) and shadow MMC for Water, Sanitation and Energy in the Ekurhuleni metro, Clr Derek Thomson.
The assembled DA members said the crisis started many years ago and it has now reached breaking point with persistent electricity outages affecting areas all the way from Germiston to Nigel, leaving residents to freeze in the dark for prolonged periods.
“The Ekurhuleni metro, by its own admission, suffers more than 1 500 unplanned outages a day, overwhelming its limited technical staff and leaving whole areas and sometimes whole towns without power for days on end,” the DA members said.
“On Friday alone, much of Daveyton was subjected to a devastatingly disruptive power outage.”
They added that in February, a substation burnt to the ground after years of warnings to the City about its state of disrepair, leaving all of the factories in New Era, Springs, without power for weeks.
In the industrial hub of Wadeville in Germiston, persistent outages over the past year have brought production to a halt, making it impossible for workers to do their jobs.
Kempton Park has also been subjected to power outages for years, and last June a fire at the Glen Marais substation resulted in a six-day outage, while power outages are a weekly occurrence in Ward 92.
“In Germiston, large swathes were without power in early June after the staff went on a go-slow and switched off areas as a result of the metro’s failure to pay its overtime bills,” the DA members said.
“Further underlying factors unearthed by the DA include poor contractor management, winning bidders subcontracting out their work in violation of the law, electricity substations that are in a critical condition from not being upgraded nor maintained and area managers who rarely go out on site to assist their teams.
“Problems also stem from underlying issues like underspending of budgets on priority repair and maintenance work, no monitoring system for overtime work done, poor human resources systems to manage non-performing employees, and major electricity cables that are not repaired years after being logged as defective.
“The City of Ekurhuleni’s energy staff are stretched thinly and having to work overtime constantly to attend to its ailing power grid.”
According to the DA residents are being taxed heavily, but staff are not hired to fulfil the municipality’s constitutional obligations.
During the meeting they said the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) estimates municipalities on average spend 10 per cent of their salary budgets on staff for energy repairs, maintenance and reticulation, but Ekurhuleni spends just 3.7 per cent on this critical function and constitutional obligation.
“The City of Ekurhuleni recently admitted in Parliament to having been engaged in load-shedding practices despite receiving sufficient supply from Eskom.
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“In some instances the DA has established that the claims of cable theft by the metro are used as a cover up for the fact that there has been a lack of maintenance on high-voltage cables,” the DA members said.
“Every hour of outage in the City of Ekurhuleni is estimated to cost R1.6-billion in lost economic output and hundreds of thousands of jobs are being placed at risk by a municipality that is failing to meet its constitutional obligations.”
In order to address this crisis, the DA proposes that:
• The standby team schedule for energy outages be shared on a weekly basis with all councillors.
• There should be rapid improvement of communication on outages, such as estimated restoration times being communicated within four hours of the outage being reported.
• The same communication should be shared with the call centre management and on social media.
• A special task team should be convened, inclusive of national government departments to investigate properties that are overloading the network, because of overcrowding and illegal connections.
• In order to assist with the illegal connections, the City should request assistance from the police and army to protect officials, municipality and private property. The metro should also investigate solutions to provide electricity or alternative energy sources to areas with illegal connections.
• All vacant posts should be filled in the energy reticulation department with an active shift-rotation system. This will reduce the amount of overtime required by the department and it will be a more effective way to spend the energy budget.
• A schedule should be published for energy rotational load-shedding to allow businesses and residents to plan in advance.
• The metro should share the budget and accurate progress reports on all projects for energy infrastructure to date and allow regular, in-person oversight visits to projects by councillors.
“Considering that the City of Ekurhuleni is the industrial heartland of Gauteng, thousands of jobs are being placed at risk by a municipality that is failing to meet its constitutional obligations.
“When Eskom reintroduces load-shedding to Gauteng, it will further exacerbate Ekurhuleni’s pending economic collapse,” the members said.
“The DA calls on the residents of Ekurhuleni to support its Take Back Your Power campaign by signing a petition to pressurise the metro to deliver a more acceptable electricity service to its residents.”
To view and sign the petition visit https://petitions.da.org.za/p/takebackyourpower.
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Contact the newsroom by emailing: Melissa Hart (Editor) germistoncitynews@caxton.co.za, Leigh Hodgson (News Editor) leighh@caxton.co.za or Busi Vilakazi (Journalist) busiv@caxton.co.za.
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