City Power’s two-minute job card leaves Midrand Industrial Park in the dark
Park manager Shaun Wilson said he was surprised that the entity opened a job card at 20:25, but by 20:26, it was closed.
Midrand Industrial Park has been in the dark for almost five months, after a job card for malfunctioning street lights was opened, and closed, within 2-minutes.
Park manager Shaun Wilson said he reported the issue to the power entity on August 7 last year. He received notification of a job card, with a reference number, being ‘opened’ and ‘accepted’ at 20:25, at 20:26 it was ‘in progress’, and then ‘closed’, much to Wilson’s dismay.
He said the street lights were installed by City Power in 2019, but even then, within two months of installation, some stopped working.
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“Now, when it’s dark, it leaves some companies prone to elements of criminality. But what boggles my mind, is a job card is opened and within two minutes is closed. When did the electrician do a site inspection to get to the bottom of the problem for it to be closed so quickly? It does not make sense at all. We pay our rates and taxes and we deserve better treatment from City Power, the city, and all its other entities,” said Wilson.
He said it’s been five months since he reported the street light issues with no response from the power entity.
The paper contacted City Power’s spokesperson Isaac Mangena on February 13 to ascertain what led to the lights not being fixed last year, when will they be fixed, and what led to the discrepancies with the job card being opened and closed in two minutes.
He said there are several reasons why a call may be closed, such as when a customer logs multiple tickets for the same fault, or when customers on the same street are affected by an outage and submit separate tickets for the same issue, among other reasons.
“Before we close a call, our customer care team will contact those who logged the call, to verify if the query has been resolved before proceeding to close it formally. However, there are instances where calls are closed erroneously, and that’s why we always encourage customers to contact City Power to verify the status of the query,” said Mangena.
Mangena said their team visited the site on February 13 to conduct an inspection and assess why the streetlights were not working.
He said following the assessment, it revealed that several streetlights inoperable due to a stolen underground supply cable, stolen Aerial Bundle Cables (ABC), and missing LED lights.
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