R300m per day lost due to load shedding – City Power

City Power said it was under immense pressure due to load shedding, losing an estimated R300 million per day since July.

According to City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena, areas of concern included Randburg and its surrounds as well as the inner city.

“We started the week [of November 14] with 3 000 outage calls from customers due to the multiple faults on our network, vandalism and theft, and the impact of load shedding,” he said.

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On November 18, City Power recorded that many integral infrastructures such as substations, mini-substations, transformer substations and distribution boxes had been vandalised and broken into with locks, doors and handles removed.

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He added that in multiple instances, repairs and restoration work were delayed due to rain.

“While we have moved the needle and fairly stabilised the network and reduced the backlog to half, we are still on the ground to ensure everything is cleared.”

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Due to this vandalism, City Power embarked on a programme to identify, repair and lock the infrastructure.
Mangena appealed to residents to desist from taking it upon themselves to put their locks on City Power infrastructure.

“We have seen this happening often in different areas. Not only is the illegal and dangerous, but it delays our technicians from doing their work, impacting the repairs and restorations.”

City Power was also in the process of ramping up its maintenance team by recruiting an estimated 500 technicians.

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