Joburg residents at breaking point after days without power

Johannesburg residents are reaching the end of their tether as City Power battles to deal with a huge backlog of outages amid incessant rain and load-shedding.

Sizwe Khoza from Lindhaven, Roodepoort, said his household has been without power since last Friday when the area experienced heavy rains that led to widespread disruption.

“I had to take my two children to their granny’s house in Soweto. That was not part of our plans because we had planned to spend quality time with them since schools are closed,” he said.

Though Khoza said he was sympathetic with City Power about the challenges and pressures they face with multiple outages across the city, he said five days was too long to wait.

“You can see houses on the other side of the suburb have power and you wonder why they can’t fix our issue,” he added.

Khoza said the family were forced to throw away food on Monday that had spoiled in the fridge. “Every day you hang on to [the] hope [that] power will be restored but it does not happen. If I had known we would go for so many days without power, I would have taken food to friends’ houses.”

Olivia Smith, 65, lives a few blocks from Khoza’s house. She said the outage is making her miserable but she is not keen to live with relatives while the issue is sorted out because she is worried about crime.

“Criminals are always on the lookout for houses where there is no-one at home. I don’t want to take that chance,” she said.

“I will stay in this house with no electricity. I have a gas stove for cooking and heating water. I don’t look forward to waking up. This issue is affecting my happiness,” she said.

Smith said the destruction of property by heavy rains last Friday was adding to their misery after walls had collapsed, trees were uprooted and roads were flooded. She said she was worried the city has not started with cleanup operations and feared more damage should the heavy rains continue.

On Sunday, a handful of frustrated residents blockaded roads with burning tyres and rocks, saying they were tired of waiting for City Power. 

“This is the only language they understand. Protesting is the only way to get action,” one resident said. 

The police were called in to clear the roads. 

On Tuesday, City Power said on Twitter that its teams were working on multiple outages around Roodepoort.   

City of Joburg MMC for environment and infrastructure service Michael Sun said City Power had deployed all available technical resources and adjusted working hours to deal with Johannesburg’s the situation.

“The recent heavy rains and flooding coupled with stages 5 and 6 load-shedding mean we are effectively dealing with a crisis situation,” he said.

“City Power is rising to this unprecedented challenge with courage and focus. I have every confidence the technical strategy on the table will be effective. I am in constant communication with the City Power team to ensure we get to every outage without delay.”

Earlier this week, Sun said City Power was dealing with as many as 1,000 outages and 4,000 calls reported by residents without power.

“I have directed City Power’s executive to ensure the recovery process is communicated to councillors and the public,” Sun said. 

Sun said on December 9 City Power issued a memo to staff in which they were told to adopt a “disaster management” approach when the number outage calls reaches the 3,000.

“Regrettably, this memo was used to mislead the community that City Power had declared a state of disaster on behalf of the City of Johannesburg and was pulling back resources, which is not true.”

He said human resources and specific technical expertise have been harnessed to stabilise the situation:

• all available electricians and assistants are being deployed to fault restorations with contractors sharing the workload;
• teams will attend to all outages from 6am to 6pm;
• area outages will continue to be attended to after 6pm with individual and isolated outages attended to by the day shift; and 
• management will meet at 7am  daily when required to regroup and resolve challenges.

“City Power is all hands on deck to deal with the range of issues facing it, from power restoration and cable faults to complex failing infrastructure and vandalism,” Sun said.

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