KwaDukuza Residents Forum writes to KwaDukuza municipality:
There has been inconsistent and unfair implementation of loadshedding in KwaDukuza by the municipality.
While loadshedding is a service delivery failure primarily caused by Eskom’s inability to generate enough electricity, our members and KwaDukuza residents, the people KDM serves, are dissatisfied with the manner in which the municipality’s electricity department has bungled the implementation.
1. There has been no formal communication from KDM around its strategy to minimise the economic damage suffered by businesses and the personal hardship brought about by the relentless loadshedding. Residents have been kept in the dark, both from an electricity and information perspective. Please communicate with residents.
2. Large areas do not experience loadshedding while other residents have suffered loadshedding for up to 8 or more hours a day (not counting other outages). There are many theories on why this is, but to date the KDM has remained deafeningly silent. Can KDM please explain this?
3. Loadshedding hours are notably in excess of those imposed on residents in the eThekwini Metro – the apparent reason for this being that this area has a “disaster area status” following the April floods and only experience loadshedding after stage 4 at reduced hours. KwaDukuza residents are, understandably, not satisfied with this as we endured the same level of flooding five months ago. What has KDM done to secure the same grace eThekwini enjoys?
4. We note that in a recent Courier news report that the KDM electricity department is, by its own admission, in a sad state of mismanagement and bleeding more than R230-million a year in “stolen energy losses”. These losses have been increasing year-on-year and it appears as if the only response from the executive director (ED) for electricity is that he now has a plan to “fix things”. A number of officials have been moved, roles changed, vacancies identified and so on.
All of these interventions seem to be tantamount to moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The ED has been at the helm of this department for many years and is patently and directly to blame for the mess this department has become.
When will the executives be held accountable for the wastage and mismanagement of this department?
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