City of Joburg loses R300m a day due to load shedding

As the country continues to feel the pinch of unabated load shedding with the deliberate power cuts by Eskom on stage 3, City Power said they City of Joburg loses in excess of R300 million a day due to the rolling blackouts.

City Power has lamented that it is under tremendous pressure due to the backlog of outages across the City of Joburg.

Over 3,000 outages calls

The power utility said it has recorded just over 3 000 outage calls reported by customers on Tuesday with half of the issues reported over a 24-hour period.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said they are battling to deal with the reported outages.  

He said the majority of the service delivery calls has emanated from the neighbourhoods served by the Hursthill substation with 902 calls, the neighbourhoods served by the Reuven substation with 641, and the neighbourhoods served by the Randburg substation with 430.

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Cause of outages

“The outages in most of these areas are due to, among others, multiple faults, equipment failures, vandalism and theft. The backlogs are exacerbated by load shedding and rainy weather over the weekend, which we have not yet recovered from.”

Mangena said City Power has beefed up teams in the problematic areas to tackle the backlogs.

“We are recalling all our resources off shift which should alleviate some of the challenges. We are also in a process of recruiting about 150 technicians with 70 of them ready to start on 1 December, with the rest starting early next year.”  

“We are continuing to ramp up maintenance of our infrastructure to avoid failures, even though load shedding is not assisting,” Mangena said.

Eskom and load shedding to blame

Mangena said the impact of load shedding by Eskom on the city’s resources and infrastructure cannot be ignored.

“City Power has lost in excess of over R300 million a day since July to repair and replace failed equipment during the 99 days of load shedding. We are working alongside councillors in different regions to ensure customers are informed of the challenges and are able to plan their lives.”

City Power has apologised for the inconvenience causes by the outages.

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