City Power promises action on Eldorado Park electricity problems

The City of Johannesburg (CoJ) and City Power (CP) have committed to addressing the concerns of residents from Eldorado Park, Klipspruit West and Bushbuckridge during an Electricity Imbizo held at Don Mateman Hall, Ext 5, Eldorado Park, on September 17.

Attendees included CoJ Executive Mayor Dada Morero, CoJ council speaker Margaret Arnolds, MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services Jack Sekwaila, and Ward 17 and 18 councillors Dwain Ponsonby and Juwairiya Kaldine.

Also in attendance was the City Power executive team, including chief financial officer Rendani Sadiki, chief commercial officer Thami Mathiso, chief operating officer Simon Maphosa and spokesperson Isaac Mangena.

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Local leaders and community members used the opportunity to voice their concerns about electricity supply and service delivery in their areas.

Residents expressed fears about power outages, dysfunctional streetlights for several years, voltage issues, poor infrastructure, slow response times and the use of prepaid meters.

Sharmaine Bice, a resident of Ward 17, stated that their streets have lacked lights for several years and expressed worries about their security.

“Our street has not had lights for years. There are two lights flickering every night. People are getting robbed in front of our yards,” she said.

Bice said she had installed a floodlight for the safety of her children and the community, but wanted to know when the pillar boxes, streetlights and voltage problems would be addressed.

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She also raised concerns about damage to household appliances caused by power outages.

“We have lost a lot of stuff, a lot of food. We are not working, our fridges are not working. I had to buy a fridge, a stove, kettles, microwaves,” she said.

Peter Lagerfeld also raised a concern regarding planned maintenance because, according to him, power often goes off shortly after maintenance has been carried out.

He also queried how cables could be stolen when electricity is live.

Eliezer Peterson from Klipspruit West expressed concerns about deductions from prepaid electricity and the amount of electricity supplied after purchasing units.

He asked how City Power would handle the matter when people pay for electricity.

Residents also raised concerns about the time it takes to restore electricity supply after cut-offs.

Another Ward 17 resident said people were fed up with raising their issues and not receiving solutions.

“How is this going to work? I mean, we also come out of the City of Johannesburg, but yet this community has always been seen as two,” she said.

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She said the community needed assistance with basic needs, including electricity, water and housing.

Kaldine expressed her concern regarding frequent power outages and electricity infrastructure problems in the area.

She demanded that Ext 1, 2, 3 and Bushbuckridge be separated from the Nancifield Substation and fed from the Eldorado Park Substation. She was concerned about load centres, mini-substations (MSS) and transformer substations (TSS).

“We want our mini load centres to be serviced. I’m talking about all MSSs and all TSSs because you cannot have a new substation operating on the current system. That is why we are having low voltage and high voltage issues,” said Kaldine.

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She also raised concerns about overhead lines in Extension 4 and the availability of cherry pickers to deal with streetlights.

Kaldine said she had been raising some of the concerns with City Power for years.

Ponsonby said the meeting gave residents an opportunity to express their frustrations directly to City Power executives.

“What is depressing is that we are sitting in this forum and we have all of the relevant people in the front row,” said Ponsonby.

He said residents had raised similar concerns repeatedly and called for the issues to be addressed.

“Our infrastructure is dilapidated. Our infrastructure is old. We are surviving on ten connections. And that brings our area to instability. Why are we not addressing that?” he asked.

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Maphosa acknowledged the concerns raised by residents and responded to questions around streetlights, pillar boxes, circuit breakers, load centres and response times.

Maphosa said City Power had a service-level agreement to respond to reported streetlight calls within three days, but explained that theft and vandalism could result in longer delays.

“When you get there, you find that actually it’s not a maintenance issue. You have to start from scratch and restore from the cable to the poles and all that,” he said.

He said City Power had started working on pillar boxes and circuit breakers in Ward 18 and that the work would cover the rest of Eldorado Park.

Maphosa also said City Power had a plan to repair load centres, mini-subs and MSSs.

He apologised to residents for the conduct of some contractors and employees and encouraged residents to report conduct that was unbecoming or illegal.

“If you see that they are doing something that is unbecoming, that is illegal, please report them to us,” he said.

Maphosa also explained that some repairs take longer because City Power has to establish the extent of the damage, obtain specialised materials or make insurance claims where infrastructure has been damaged or vandalised.

Chief commercial officer Thami Mathiso addressed concerns about prepaid meters and electricity relief.
He encouraged residents to register for the City’s debt relief programme, which he said could result in between 50% and 100% of qualifying debt being written off.

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Mathiso also addressed concerns about fixed charges on prepaid meters, saying customers registered for the Expanded Social Package (ESP) would have the fixed charge written off and only pay for the units they use.

He encouraged prepaid customers to register for ESP.

On concerns about meters running fast, Mathiso said City Power conducts meter tests and would refund customers where it was established that a meter had overcharged them.

Sekwaila told the Eldos residents that some local supply problems may be eased by reconfiguring the network serving customers in Eldorado Park Extensions 1, 2, 3 and 4, as well as Bushkoppies.

He said low-voltage strain caused by backyard dwellings is not limited to this community. It is an issue across the City of Johannesburg.

Those additional dwellings need to be normalised and metered so that consumption can be tracked and the extra load on mini-substations and transformers can be managed.

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Sekwaila said backyard connections that remain unmetered are a major cause of overloading. Illegal-connection cut-offs are continuing across the City, with recent operations in Alexandra and Tshepisong.

According to Morero, the City was at Eldorado Park to solve the electricity problems of the people and promised to return with a solution.

He indicated that a technical study would be conducted to identify the problem at the Eldorado Park, Nancifield, Freedom Park and Ennerdale stations and determine whether isolation of certain areas could help.

“This will take one week,” he said.

Morero further pointed out that the teams would immediately work on fixing the streetlights despite the ongoing vandalism problem.

As far as electricity debt is concerned, Morero indicated that the City was developing a process to solve the problem of historical debt.

But he explained that he could not make a formal announcement because the process is still going through legal channels and has to be presented to council.