Councillor Truluck’s ward consists of Parkhurst, Parktown North, Rosebank, Parkwood, Saxonwold, Braamfontein Spruit, Johannesburg Zoo, Zoo Lake and Craighall Park.
One of the most common frustrations expressed by local residents to Truluck and similarly to the Rosebank Killarney Gazette, is the inconsistency of the load shedding schedule.
More specifically the schedules listed boundaries in some areas do not correlate with the region it is catergorised in.
Therefore in some suburbs despite being listed under a certain load shedding region, residents complain that their load shedding times are not consistent with City Power’s timetable.
In ward 117, load shedding regions are separated into 8B (Parkhurst, Parktown North- West, Parkwood- West and Saxonwold- South), 2B (Parktown North- North, Rosebank- West, Parkwood- East, Saxonwold- North, Craighall Park- East of
Waterval) and 1B (Rosebank- East, Dunkeld, Dunkeld West and Melrose).
In a long standing attempt to better understand the load shedding boundaries between these areas, Truluck spent a day mapping the traffic lights in his ward.
“With the on again off again load shedding we had recently, coupled with power outages, it was difficult for residents and businesses to determine in which block they were located. However, on 6 February, the perfect load shedding Storm hit Ward 117. Each of the three blocks (8B, 1B and 2B) was load shed one after each other. So I drove. or in some cases crawled, through the ward logging each traffic light that was out in each load shedding block” he said.
Truluck concluded that the suburbs of Parktown North, Rosebank, Saxonwold and Parkwood were particularly confusing as the geographical boundaries didn’t always correlate with the listed regions.
“It is quite clear that the City Power’s divisions are based on their sub-stations and have nothing to do with the actual geographical suburban divisions. They are listing where the power is coming from, and not where it is going to.
So in Rosebank West, or Block 2B [the electricity supply comes] from a different sub-station to the areas located [in Rosebank East], listed under Block 1B. This is repeated in the other suburbs.”
As a result of his recent efforts, Truluck has mapped the different streets and suburbs in ward 117.
Are you caught in the boundary between two different load shedding zones?
