Region 3 urban management teams have rolled out cherry-pickers to address overgrown branches that cause outages in Ward 92.

MMC for Roads and Transport, as well as the MMC responsible for the region, Tlangi Mogale said despite the beautiful scenery that the jacaranda trees produce, that their overgrown branches interfere with powerlines.

“This operation is particularly important as it aids in the reduction of power outages as well as the maintenance of trees overhanging on our streets. This is not only for the purpose of power outage prevention but also to increase the illumination levels of streetlights and ensure that overgrown tree branches on our roads do not adversely impact road users,” Mogale said.

The effort was carried out by the urban forestry teams together with the energy and electricity teams in the Colbyn area in Region 3.

Mogale said the urban managerial team has devised a way to handle the influx of tree pruning requests.

“This is done by categorising each request and assigning a team to resolve the logged call. Starting with low-hanging fruit like fallen trees, then tree pruning and dangerous trees, and finally, removing tree stumps. While the joint operations were centred on Colbyn, the other teams pruned [trees on] streets on Nelson Mandela Drive, Nico Smith, Justice Muhammed and Ben Swart,” Mogale said.

Community members are urged to report service requests correctly when calling customer services on 012 358 9999 to enable swifter responses by the relevant team:

– Report trees along powerlines to Electricity department
– Report all other tree-related services that are not along powerlines to Urban Forestry department.

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