Ten days after a severe storm, many residents remain powerless, some for as long as nine days, as frustration with the metro’s slow response continues to mount.

Ward 82 councillor Siobhan Müller said the metro’s celebration of progress does not reflect the reality of residents who have endured days without electricity.

“Due to budget cuts, there are no people working on weekends,” Müller said.

“The metro only deployed extra teams eight days later. Since their deployment, I’ve seen a slight difference, but it should never have taken this long.”

She said the damage caused by the storms has been aggravated by slow response times, limited manpower and poor co-ordination.

According to Müller, although some parts of her ward have had power restored, many streets remain without electricity as of Monday morning.

“The power is on in some areas but off in others. In my ward, the areas without power include 11th Street, Rosemary, Sussex, Anderson Street, 24th and 25th streets, 22nd and 21st streets,” she said.

She said some individual homes have now been without electricity for 7–9 days.

Müller added that a snapped cable on 11th Street has still not been located.

“They say there’s a snapped cable on 11th Street, but no one can find it. Residents are looking for it,” she said.

She said contractors replaced damaged cables yesterday morning after working through Saturday night, but delays continued.

“We waited for the switching team to come. This morning, I have no updates,” Müller said.

Despite these ongoing issues, the metro maintains that its intensified efforts have produced substantial progress.

Metro spokesperson Selby Bokaba said the city has deployed 17 additional personnel to Region 3, diverted from metering teams and supported by reinforcements from other regions.

He said outages across the city dropped from 5 556 at the start of the week to 410 by Friday morning.

“Region 3, which initially accounted for 60 of the 84 major outages citywide, now has only nine unresolved major faults.”

Bokaba described the metro’s progress as the result of continuous shifts, strengthened field operations and strategic redeployment of resources to fast-track repairs.

He said technicians have remained committed despite ongoing daily outages caused by wet ground conditions and compromised infrastructure.

However, residents say the metro’s statistics do not reflect their daily realities: spoiled groceries, financial strain from generator fuel, irregular work schedules and households relying on neighbours for basic needs.

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