On October 31, Edenvale was plunged in darkness after an attempt was made to steam cables from an Edenvale substation.
Electricity supply to some areas was only restored after 9pm that evening.
“Many residents complained about their calls to the municipality going unanswered,” said Clr Hart.
She said residents were patient and understood that the electricity department worked tirelessly to reconnect residents.
“Residents were frustrated because they did not know what was going on or how long the problem would take to repair, which is unacceptable,” said Clr Hart.
According to Clr Hart, residents said call centre phones rang continually without answer and eventually many residents gave up.
“There are two issues here. The first being that the call centre could not be contacted and the second being that they did not know what was actually going on and I ask myself why,” said Clr Hart.
“If I could find out what the problem was and the expected time for power to be restored, why could the call centre not?” she added.
Clr Hart said the call centre used Twitter to alert residents of the situation.
“@EMM_Call_Centre tweeted that no updates were forthcoming from Eskom. I replied to their tweet and informed them of the status of the situation which was then re-tweeted,” said Clr Hart.
“At least the message started getting out to those with smart phones,” she said.
Spokesperson for the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM), Mr Samuel Modiba, said that on the day high call volumes were recorded by the municipal call centre.
“According to our reports, the phones were only unanswered during the early morning. We received 552 calls on the non-life threatening emergency number. The call centre was extremely busy and not all calls could be answered,” said Mr Modiba.
“The incident was posted on the Twitter page of @EMM_Call_Centre and indicated that there was no electricity in Edenvale due to an Eskom related problem,” he added.
Mr Modiba said a press release was also sent out to radio stations and local media in an attempt to communicate the problem with residents.
