The City of Joburg MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services Department (EISD) Cllr Tania Oldjohn has expressed her satisfaction that City Power is doing its best to ensure that electricity supply in the City is kept to a maximum level at all times and is doing its best to mitigate challenges and power outages.

The MMC was making a tour of the entity’s headquarters in Booysens yesterday, where she met City Power acting CEO Nancy Maluleke and her management team, which included technical and operations teams.

During the meeting, the MMC raised her concern over a number of issues related to power supply in the City and surrounding areas that are supplied by City Power, main ones being faulty street lights, vandalism, illegal connections, theft of infrastructure as well as safety and security around infrastructure, such as sub-stations. At the heart of her concern was the delays that are often experienced in restoring power in case of an outage caused by these factors.

City Power was able to give details of how they mitigate and navigate these challenges as well as future plans to address these. The team explained the due processes and huge cost involved in restorations of outages and replacement of damaged or stolen infrastructure, which often causes delays and leave residents without power for long periods. Often the delays are in the procurement process and the logistics of transporting the equipment, which requires specialised transportation, all of which can take months. The entity is working on a new system and structure that will shorten these processes in future.

With regards to protection of infrastructure against vandalism, theft and illegal connections, the team noted that the act of always replacing such infrastructure without putting measures in place to prevent future repeat of similar offences is costing the entity and the City a lot in terms of revenue.

Plans are in place to beef up security around these infrastructures in addition to existing law enforcement structures, to ensure ultimate safety and security. The current security measures in place are already costly, and they are still not sufficient to deter these acts of criminality.

However, it remains even more costly to restore damaged or stolen infrastructure than to put in place additional safety measures. As such, the entity will invest in more security measures going forward. In addition, there will be specific educational programmes aimed at sensitising residents to take ownership of such infrastructure and ensure that it’s safe from all these criminal activities that compromise power supply.

MMC Oldjohn was later given a tour of the plant’s warehouse and other key areas that are crucial to storage and logistics of infrastructure. She expressed her satisfaction that City Power is doing its best to ensure that the City’s lights stay on. She was particularly happy about the plans to involve the residents in the form of education campaigns to get them involved in helping to keep the City’s lights on by participating in the protection of such against vandalism, damage and theft.

For more information contact:  

Stanley Itshegetseng
Deputy Director: Communication and stakeholder relations
Office of the MMC – EISD
Cell: 0837024778  
 
12/10/2021