Your leadership is not satisfactory

David Potter writes:

AN OPEN LETTER : BAD PLANNING. PLUGGING A PROBLEM THAT IS SHORTING ELSEWHERE

Dear MMC Mfikoe

We all know that the entity under your political leadership, City Power is shorting and surging (and not in a good way). It is an entity that I have written the most about in the last year and that is aging its employees, residents and councillors prematurely.

Let’s give some timelines to this:

– 1 December 2013 : Survey report written on the public’s perception of the Technical Call Centre

– 21 April 2014 : Press Response on outages in the Randburg Depot area

– 25 June 2014 : Speech given in Council Chambers about call centre and City Power non-delivery

– 29 June 2014 : Press Response “City Power unable to respond to power outages as a ‘World Class African City’ should”

– 1 July 2014 : Public meeting held to discuss continued power outages

– 31 July 2014 : Urgent public debate brought to council and rejected on the basis that it was “not factual or urgent”

With all of the hype and pressure placed on the entity and your office we believe that an urgent meeting was called by yourself with the management of City Power. At this meeting it was discussed that City Power depot management photos and contact details would be made available to the public and published in the local newspapers.

This wouldn’t be unusual or unfair in any other municipality where:

1. The Call Centre worked like it should

2. The Call Centre answered calls within a reasonable time

3. The Call Centre was able to provide updated time frames for resolution of power outages

4. The Dispatch Centre wasn’t overwhelmed with a manual system of allocating calls to contractors/electricians instead of an electronic system (which is used in other municipalities across the country)

5. The Depot under resourced and stretched to capacity (with very few available Operators like at the Randburg depot)

6. The Network so under maintained and largely at its end of life

Just a few weeks ago, a full page spread in the local newspapers appeared with world class photos of the depot managers, their email addresses and their mobile numbers.

Well, what a silly idea.

Let me detail why I think this:

– Depot managers have a large responsibly of keeping the power on across their depot area

– They have a large administrative responsibility within the depot related to staffing, contractors and answering to their management

– They are humans (funny that) and also need sleep and time out but now that their mobile numbers are available to the public they are expected to be on call 24 hours a day.

– What happens when a depot manager changes, the legacy number of that depot manager will haunt them forever.

– The City of Joburg Technical Call Centre is so badly run (a lot of the time) that when residents cannot get through to the Call Centre as their power trips, the first person they will now call will be the depot manager. Times that by the number of power outages and the number of residents who have access to his/her phone number:

1. Not all the calls or SMSs can be answered or responded to, resulting in negative perception of a depot manager.

2. When there is a priority escalation or outage the depot manager may be inundated with calls and unable to address anything else.

3. The call centre will continue to be bypassed which goes against it being the one stop shop for interacting with the City, where calls are logged on the system for record purposes including insurance claims, liability claims, work order processing etc.

4. Depot manager cannot go on holiday/leave without it being disturbed, and refer to point 1.

– Yes, depot managers are responsible to answer to the public but surely not in this manner.

As a Councillor and a fellow human being, from the day I saw their beautiful faces in the newspaper my heart sank for their sanity, health and wellbeing. A month on, I continue to worry about the sustainability of this idea.

You know too well how I operate in my Ward and handle other queries from residents in the City. 100% in the interest of service delivery, if I thought this was a good idea you would be the first person I would let know.

As it is too late to retract their phone numbers and this idea, my only hope is:

1. That with urgency the City of Joburg Technical Call Centre be better equipped to answer calls quickly or give better messaging about power outages.

2. That the City Power Dispatch department with urgency gets better technology to allocate calls to resources in the field.

3. That City Power market their Twitter handle extensively (@CityPowerJHB) as whoever is managing this is doing an excellent job and keeps the public well informed of large bulk outages.

4. That the depot managers record on their phones a voice mail explaining to those calling that due to an influx of calls they may not be able to answer all the calls.

5. And finally, that the residents go easy on the depot managers when they call. There is nothing worse than being on the end of a call with abusive residents shouting.

18 September 2014

Councillor David Potter

DA Ward Councillor, Ward 102

david@oursuburb.co.za

082 885 9688

Councillor Matshidiso Mfikoe is the ANC Political Head responsible for the City of Johannesburg portfolio of the Environment, Infrastructure and Service Department, which includes the City Owned Entities being City Power and Joburg Water.?

Editor’s note: Letter published unedited.