Johannesburg - Power utility City Power said that it is under “tremendous” pressure due to the backlog of outages across the City of Joburg.
By Tuesday morning, City Power opened up with just over 3 000 outage calls reported by its customers, with half of those over 24 hours.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the service delivery centres with many calls include Hursthill with 902 calls, Reuven with 641, and Randburg with 430.
“The outages in most of these areas are due to, among others, multiple faults, equipment failures, vandalism and theft. The backlogs are exacerbated by load shedding and rainy weather over the weekend, which we have not yet recovered from,” Mangena said.
City Power said it has since last night beefed up teams in the problematic areas mentioned to deal with the backlogs.
Mangena said the utility is recalling all its resources off shift, which should alleviate some of the challenges. He added that City Power is also in the process of recruiting about 150 technicians, with 70 of them ready to start on December 1, with the rest starting early next year.
“We are continuing to ramp up maintenance of our infrastructure to avoid failures, even though load shedding is not assisting,” City Power said.
The power utility said it is also firming up its partnership with the service providers who are assisting by using their material in certain instances to ensure the repairs are done expeditiously.
“The impact of load shedding to our resources and infrastructure cannot be ignored. City Power has lost in excess of over R300 million a day since July to repair and replace failed equipment during the 99 days of load shedding,” Mangena said.
City Power said it is working alongside councillors in different regions to ensure customers are informed of the challenges and are able to plan their lives.
“We apologise for the inconvenience caused by this,” Mangena said.
The Star