Joburg needs urgent solution to power crisis

13 June 2021

Johannesburg residents are facing a real power crisis which needs urgent short-term solutions to stabilise the grid, and long-term plans to guarantee supply. The DA in Johannesburg has been on this issue for months now, keeping residents informed and lobbying for increased spending to stabilise our power grid.

We all know that City Power is crumbling, and Eskom is unable to provide us with enough power to avoid load-shedding. Today there are 4807 open calls across the City, which means that at least 5000 residents are without power and have logged a call, but we know from experience that this number can be up to three times higher. Of those 4807 open calls, three out of the eight depots (where repair teams are based) have over 1500 open calls from residents, and there are currently only 62 teams across the City to deal with these outages.

All depots have told us that there is no money at present for new equipment and parts are limited - most teams only have copper wire and insulation tape to do repairs. In one case a team went to collect a new minisub for Wilgeheuwel that had been without power for five days, but were told by the supplier that it had not been paid for. Technicians managed to get hold of a refurbished unit, but this malfunctioned within an hour of being installed.

Currently there are eight known minisubs required to restore power: Kyasands (3), Randpark, Bryanston, Blandford, Ruiterhof, and Fleurhof. 

On Friday we tried to get a follow-up meeting with City Power senior management, but they had already gone home by 15:00 - during a crisis!

This is no longer just a local issue - Johannesburg is the economic heart of the country and we cannot expect economic growth when the heart cannot beat. We have asked the Mayor and MMC to communicate their plans to effect emergency repairs and secure the grid, but their deafening silence shows just how much they care about residents.

The DA in Johannesburg will be going to all regional depots to meet with managers and get a full and real picture of the actual crisis, and will be putting out a petition to the Mayor to communicate daily with residents in affected areas, provide full transparency of the number and location of outages, and a commitment to not loadshed residents who have been without power for 48 hours or more.

We will also be lodging a formal complaint with Nersa against City Power for failing to provide residents with quality service that includes uninterrupted supply and reliable communications.

The DA in Parliament has already requested urgent intervention from the National Department of Co-operative Governance, and will also request a meeting with Eskom to find a solution to this crisis.

We are all beyond frustrated with loadshedding, and loadshedding that takes days to recover from and impacts on water supply is just too much for us all to bear. If Johannesburg is to realise its full potential as the City of Opportunity and the economic heart of the country, then we need real action to address this crisis.

Cape Town has been able to make plans to prevent or avert loadshedding, and has invested properly in their power grid so that loadshedding doesn't last any longer than necessary. As the DA we have long championed for allowing residents and entire cities to procure clean energy that would free them from Eskom and loadshedding, and at long last the President has agreed to our demands by allowed 100MW of embedded power generation.

We need to leverage this to allow small, localised generation units in each region, and enable residents to pursue clean power solutions so that they can live independent of the main grid. Other clean energy alternatives include biogas production at our wastewater treatment plants which can also fuel our buses and provide safer stove fuel alternatives for residents of informal settlements.

This is the real difference that the DA brings to residents where we govern, and we want to bring this change to Johannesburg residents so that our City can realise its full potential.

As a resident you have the power to bring change and restore power: your vote. Register to vote from 17-18 July, and vote DA on 27 October. Let's fix Johannesburg together!

Issued by Nikki van Dyk, DA CoJ SMMC for Electricity and Water, 13 June 2021