Residents frustrated over power outages

Members of the community were left without power, ranging from 24 hours to eight days in some cases according to residents, during recent weeks.

One resident, who did not want his name published, told the EXPRESS that he was one of the several people in Eckstein Street, in Observatory, who was left without power for about eight days.

“We are supposed to be receiving decent service delivery. We pay our rates. It is not the first time we have suffered power outages. This has been going on for years and is becoming worse. It frustrates me when the city calls Johannesburg a world class city. Stop calling it that. We are not receiving what we are paying for,” he said.

He also complained about the city’s call centre, stating it is a waste of time.

“When you call the call centre you cannot get hold of an operator. You have to listen to a recording that has nothing to do with you. And we are never told the truth about what the problem is or kept informed about when the problem will be fixed,” he said.

Clr Da Rocha said he received calls from residents in Bez Valley, Bertrams, Malvern and Kensington.

In his letter addressed to the mayor, Clr Mpho Parks Tau, Clr Da Rocha said he understands that breakdowns happen.

“However, I cannot understand why the breakdowns result in power failures that last eight days.

“There is a lack of proper maintenance and upgrading of the existing infrastructure. The city is allowing so much overcrowding, without upgrading the infrastructure,” he said.

He complained about the theft of cables and the call centre. According to him, residents who cannot get hold of anyone at the call centre contact him. He told the EXPRESS, “I do not blame them for contacting me. It is frustrating when you try to contact the relevant department and get no joy. However, I have been the subject of endless verbal abuse from residents who turned to me out of desperation. And I am, after all, the residents’ representative,” he said.

He asked the mayor what is the way forward to providing residents with services they are paying for. He told the EXPRESS that City Power workers did a great job, considering how many power outages occurred at the same time.

“I commend them and do not have a problem with them. They co-operated and kept me informed of what was happening. But the city needs to do more to reduce the power outages,” he said.

The EXPRESS forwarded an enquiry to the city and was advised to send it to Mr Sol Masolo and Mr Louis Pieterse, from City Power. The enquiry was sent to them on June 17, requesting comment on June 19. At the time of going to print, no comment had been received.

In an article published earlier this month, Mr Kgamanyane Maphologela, the director of customer communications at the City of Johannesburg, commented about the call centre.

He said the quality assurance team is constantly used to listen to voice recordings, calling customers and calling the call centre as a ghost call. He said the reports on these incidents are used to correct process errors, product knowledge errors, unprofessional behaviour and to compliment good service.

He also said that a number of coaching and training process-related interventions have taken place and therefore the speed to answer has improved overall in the call centres. He did however, add that there are occasions where an outage leads to much higher volumes than resources can cope with. Mr Maphologela said in this instance every effort was made to ensure communication was done through the media, voice messaging and the online logging is available especially for electricity matters.

@JoziReporter