Ward councillors feel the pressure from changes at City Power

The Northcliff Melville Times spoke to ward councillors to better understand how they are coping with the new work schedule that City Power had introduced at its service delivery centres.
While frustrations are evident, all were at pains to convey that the men and women at City Power’s Hursthill service delivery centre work extremely hard and mostly do the best they can under difficult circumstances.

Ward 88 councillor Nicolene Jonker said, “Decisions taken about city-wide operational changes are taken at a much higher level than the men and women we as councillors deal with in relation to service delivery. Employees we engage with cannot be blamed for executive decisions which negatively affect their work.”

Following City Power’s decision to focus most of their efforts during the day with new four-day shifts, Northcliff Melville Times asked if the councillors have noticed a difference in performance from the power utility. The change was brought about in part due to the City’s response to the massive storms at the end of the year.

Jonker said, “There has been a significant and negative change in service delivery. The Hursthill team, headed by Malope Ramagaga, introduced a system which saw greater accountability from team leaders and technicians at Hursthill, which was fantastic. His system made escalations and repair times much shorter and enabled residents to begin to know personally which teams were servicing their suburbs.

“The new model has resulted in teams adhering to the new four days on and four days off roster, meaning there is no longer a night shift that attends to problems or faults. This has greatly and negatively impacted residents. For example, when there is a power outage late in the afternoon residents will have to wait until the following day when City Power has teams working again. These delays are often exacerbated by load-shedding.”

She added explaining to residents that City Power had taken away the night shift and having half the teams working was very difficult.
“We all have residents that rely on electricity not only for the usual requirements but those who are especially vulnerable for one reason or another and are really suffering from this, and load-shedding. We hope City Power will bring the old model back.”

Ward 99 councillor Nikki van Dyk said, “The last six years under City Power have not been easy but in about June last year, the Hursthill depot instituted a new model whereby they had assigned one lead technician to each ward. This brought about major and successful changes to the service we received.
“Power outages were attended to in record time during the day and there was an MV [medium voltage] team at night who assisted with major outages. Following the storms in early December, teams reverted to four days on and four days off. This has sent my ward, and several others back into struggling once again for days for restoration.”

Ward councillors have a meeting with City Power in the coming week to see how these concerns can be addressed.

Related Article:

Load-shedding costs City Power R3.6million a day during load-shedding