Ward 55 residents irate over power outages
The councillor said she is committed to her work but would not tolerate personal attacks.
The recent power outages in Chrisville, Robertsham, and the surrounding areas have brought anger and frustration to the Ward 55 community.
On April 8 at about 03:00, the power went off in the area, causing frustration for the residents. Although City Power and Ward 55 Clr Rashieda Landis acknowledged the outage, the residents felt the response wasn’t enough.
One resident without power said the first correspondence from City Power was at 05:10. They said the constant reports from City Power saying a team is on-site, which the councillor then copies and pastes to the various groups, are untrue. They said community members drove to the substations where City Power claimed to be on-site.
They also said it would be better if the councillor stepped down because she does not serve them.
Some of the things they accuse her of are:
• She copies and pastes messages that are not factually true;
• Landis’ poor and lack of communication concerns them;
• She posts poor, disgusting, and rude messages when she gets called out and gets defensive because she gets called out for not doing her due diligence as a councillor.
• The community is fed up. When things become too much, her husband and daughter want to take on the entire community.
• She has blatantly told people it is not her job to do follow-ups on complaints needing it. Then what is she here for?
In her defence, Landis said she has never been rude to the community but that some are racist.
“They want to manipulate and be vulgar, and when I respond, I’m defensive. Truth is, I am not allowed to demand and disrespect the stakeholders (City Power). It is not in my mandate to do so.
“As a councillor, I can only escalate the matter. I can only give feedback as I get it from the stakeholders. Nothing more and nothing less.
“They are never happy with any response. They wanted proof I was on site, which is not within my mandate. But we go out if we can. I post pictures, then it is because I like photo opportunities. I will always remain committed to my cause but will not tolerate personal attacks,” Landis said.
Tlangelani Rikhotso from City Power said the team was on-site, had located the fault, and preparations for repairs were underway.
“We apologise for the inconvenience caused. We have been communicating about the status of all our outages through all our social media pages, including our WhatsApp channel. Yesterday, we said we were on site, and they said we weren’t only for the operator to send a picture that he was indeed on site. The team might not be at the substation, depending on where the cable fault is,” noted Rikhotso.
