The relationship between City Power customers becomes further frayed with every interaction.
From all corners of Ward 97, residents have been expressing their displeasure with the power utility and the ward’s elected representative. An area plagued by electricity outages, residents have also raised concerns over the conduct of City Power employees and the quality of communication between the entities and residents. Spoiled food, the inability to plan their lives as well as security and health risks rank top of the daily struggles caused by unplanned outages.
One frustrated resident has documented the number of hours he has sat without electricity in mid-November. Between November 10 and the morning of November 26 while he was typing up his emailed complaint using battery power, the man listed 125 hours of downtime in that 16 day period – excluding load-shedding. The resident, who wished to remain anonymous, complained about the ward councillor’s fault logging procedures, stating that he wanted a ward councillor who was pro-active and not reactive.
The anonymous resident believed a ward councillor should be in direct contact with senior City Power officials during outages and be on-site to provide first hand updates, not simply repost City Power social media updates. The resident believed the ward councillor should be more sympathetic to the community and not act in a defensive manner when they use foul language out of frustration.
One Wilgeheuwel resident has a two-pronged bone to pick with City Power. Ken Brijder’s 76 year old mother lives in a retirement village in Honeydew and she requires an uninterrupted oxygen supply. The lengthy outages have seen Ken spend roughly R50 000 to ensure his mother can survive on back-up systems. Although a private development, Ken feels retirement homes should be given special exemption from load-shedding, much like hospitals have currently.
Additionally, Ken claims to have been forced to erroneously pay City Power R13 000 to avoid disconnection in August. Ken claims that City Power technicians inspected his street-side meter box unprompted before informing him that he had an illegal connection. Ken, who has a pre-paid meter, had neither experienced nor reported any issues and claims the technicians had to remove the entire box to point out the fault which still had an intact seal. Ken discovered his cul-de-sac neighbour received the same treatment but that his neighbours reconnection fee was substantially lower.
Ken stated that almost 200 residents in the suburb had similar stories. City Power have been approached for comment via email and Whatsapp on December 1 with no response received at the time of publication. Ken, like most irate residents, directs his frustration at Ward 97 councillor Jaqcues Hoon. While the often criticised councillor is not responsible for the outages or the restorations, the perception of residents is one of inaction, a lack of communication and the neglecting of their needs.
The Ward 97 councillor responded by saying he does his best to attend to all complaints but is inundated with queries and service delivery reports. He emphasised this by stating how following a two and a half hour meeting he opened his Whatsapp to over 500 messages. He claims to attempt to prioritise responses based on their greater urgency and apologised to anyone who felt they were being ignored. Additionally, he requested that everyone reach out to one another in a respectful manner.
It is Councillor Hoon’s belief that he and his colleagues’ work should not be centred around solving problems on an individual level but use their positions in council to rectify service delivery agreements at portfolio level. He sited delays in the supply chain process due to a stifled political process and the impasse in getting the proposed R2 billion budget injection approved in council.
On the immediate horizon, he aims to meet with the Hamburg depot manager next week with a view to arranging a public meeting were residents can get answers from himself and City Power officials.
