Power Outages in the City of Johannesburg

City Power is battling to cope with the demands of winter , and system deficiencies in  a number of areas , as evidenced by the recurring  and sometimes excessively long outages . City Power have not always upgraded the distribution system when new consumers have been added or been able to replace aging infrastructure timeously - sometimes due to bad planning, sometimes due to cutbacks by the City itself on capital, and operational funds.  Sometimes the efforts of the staff have been fruitless due to mistakes made by those inadequately trained for their duties.  

Under the DA these shortcomings would have been improved over time with as promised in the manifesto an increased investment in infrastructure.  Critical revenue that could be used to address some of these problems is been swallowed up in servicing debt for which Johannesburg has an almost insatiable need.

This need is driven by dangerously low collection levels. City Power had the best collection levels at 89% Year to Date by the end of March 2011, but this still falls critically short of the 94% we need to collect City wide to cover just our operational expenditure, let alone improving the infrastructure.  

Nevertheless the scourge of cable theft and illegal connections  is a significant contributing factor to the situation at the present time and needs to be eradicated. Cable theft should be treated as economic sabotage as well as the receiving of stolen copper. A council resolution was passed 10 years ago to move in that direction, but nothing has been achieved. Urgent steps to get the law enforcement system to be supporting the community are essential.  

The DA calls on the residents to be extra vigilant and report all suspicious activity,  and calls on the JMPD and SAPS to step up their activities in this field. Residents need to contribute to stability by using electricity sparingly as improvements take time to implement.

Finally the Call Centre is a disgrace to the Council and its many hardworking staff, and we call on the Mayor to decentralise control of the call centres back to the utilities with immediate effect so that the call centre can be put to work as it was intended .

Statement issued by Councillor Mmusi Maimane- DA Caucus Leader in the City of Johannesburg, June 13 2011

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