A very disappointed Eskom client
No finger can be pointed at the staff at the Randfontein office as they are efficient and friendly, and they did try their best to assist.
This serves to highlight service delivery issues.
Service delivery is the hype of the moment with many communities taking to the streets and destroying things – the destroying part sometimes being more problematic than the non-delivered service.
I live on a plot on the outskirts of Randfontein. My electricity supply is delivered directly by Eskom. In the early hours of Monday morning some person decided he needed a transformer badly and helped himself to the transformer that supplied electricity to my premises. Less than an hour later Eskom was on scene and took pictures. I was duly impressed with the speed at which this happened. I phoned the Eskom call centre to notify them of the problem, but left it after a few unsuccessful attempts. At 8am I presented myself at the Randfontein office and was the fourth person there, but the consultant could not help me as their system was offline.
The rest of the day, [I tried to contact them] to no avail.
Tuesday morning, I went back to the Eskom office. The office was closed. The security guard on duty told me they were offline. The staff were not in as they could not work when the system was offline, and could not help me. The rest of the day I tried contacting the call centre. Around 4pm I got through. The agent asked me which province I lived in and then told me he could not help me as he deals with a specific area, but undertook to get someone to call me back. I was skeptical but could do nothing.
Wednesday morning, I was the first person at the Eskom office and was assisted. I received my reference number and was told to report the matter after four hours if the power was not back. Hours later I reported the matter to the call centre via SMS as the power had not been restored. I received an SMS back that according to the field staff, the power had been restored. I took pictures of the lines, pole on the ground with no transformer and went back to the Eskom office and reported the matter again. They assisted and phoned the field staff to follow up but their phone was struck by lighting. This I heard after the cellphones of many different people at the field office had been called. Needless to say, four days later I still didn’t know when the power would be restored. The cost so far is defrosted food from a deep freeze that had to be destroyed, wasted cellphone airtime of R120 while trying to get through to a call centre, and 12 Malawi fish having died in my fish tank.
No finger can be pointed at the staff at the Randfontein office as they are efficient and friendly, and they did try their best to assist.
However, staff being absent when the system fails as they cannot work? Really? Not having a phone linked to the system for emergencies? Surely the decision [to close] was taken by the head of that specific office. Is this official Eskom policy? What would Eskom do if this became a matter of life and death when, for example, someone who depends on an oxygen machine is deprived of it?
There are more questions, but I will leave it for now.
I am a very disappointed Eskom client.
