One of our ward councillors' newsletter about this farce:
Load-Shedding Last Weekend
Despite the City’s assurances that they would be ready for load-shedding after the shambolic 1st weekend, this past weekend’s performance ended up in an even worse shambles. MMC Mfikwe’s reply to my urgent load-shedding question (see last week’s email for more info) is the usual tactic of deny, deflect and play the blame game (see below). What is quite clear is that the current ANC administration is unable to cope with running a City plagued by years of neglect and maladministration.
The weekend load-shedding started off OK. Schedules were released in good time. Residents were prepared. Businesses hired generators. The City’s twitter accounts were primed and ready to go. But then it all started going to pot.
In my ward, load-shedding didn’t occur, despite most of it being scheduled from 10am-2’30pm. We were left wondering what was going to happen? Would we be load-shed later? Had City Power got its schedule wrong?
In other parts of Joburg it went as per schedule. In Blairgowrie, just across the Braamfontein Spruit, power went off promptly at 10am. But it didn’t come back on again. For 40-50 hours! No meaningful information was released by City Power. The Randburg Depot Manager was un-aware of the problem when I contacted him on Sunday morning. The repair team only arrived on Sunday night and power could only be restored in the early hours of Monday morning.
The same situation occurred in Linden, Robindale, Fontainbleu, Ferndale, Riverbend and Malanshof. All the outages were the result of technical faults, load-shedding and overloading. The power could not be restored after their load-shedding period was over.
In Bryanston, the Hobart Sub-Station blew up on Saturday night after their load-shedding ended and power was restored. Admittedly, it was in an Eskom area, but it took City Power several valuable hours while they argued between the entities as to who was responsible for repairing it.
So what was the response by the City to these outages?
There was only ONE operational team for the whole of the Northern Suburbs at the weekend. Thus, each outage had to be dealt with one at a time. This is why it took over 24 hours to get to Blairgowrie as they were busy fixing the other outages first.
This is also why there were no communication as to what the actual problem was and what the likely restoration times were going to be. There was just no way to know what the problems were until the team arrived at each outage. Residents were literally left in the dark with defrosting freezers, dead security systems and, in one case, dying pet fish.
Further compounding the problem is that the only City Power storeroom that is open after hours and at weekends is in Reuven, in south Joburg. So technicians have to schlepp from the repair site to the store and then back again.
City Power added to the confusion on Sunday, by claiming that they would be load-shedding at Stage 2 despite Eskom saying that they were load-shedding at Stage 1. At Stage 2, the City load-sheds two blocks per time frame and places a much heavier burdon on its residents and businesses. It turned out that City Power finally relented and load-shed on Stage 1.
So MMC Mfikwe, I do not accept your excuses and platitudes. Yes, Eskom imposes load-shedding on the City, but it is how the City handles it that is shambolic in the extreme.
City of Joburg says load shedding does not rest with the municipality
The City of Johannesburg has unequivocally distanced itself from the inaccuracies and logistical issues that impacted the public during load shedding on the weekend of 22 and 23 November.
MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services, Matshidiso Mfikoe, says City Power cannot be held accountable for Eskom's internal issues.
This followed Ward 117 councillor Tim Truluck slamming the city council’s execution to load shedding last weekend, describing its communication plan as ‘shambolic’.
MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services, Matshidiso Mfikoe, acknowledged the concerns about its communication regarding load shedding but said the municipality was only able to provide the information that was available to it.
According to Truluck, the City Power load shedding web page could not be opened by particular browsers, the website indicated that there was no load shedding for two out of the three days when in fact load shedding was being implemented.
“For most of Sunday it [the website] did not have any load shedding information; residents did not know that the schedule from Saturday would be repeated on Sunday; areas that were under load shedding on Saturday were also under load shedding on Sunday and no communication was issued to ward councillors.”
He added that on municipal communication platforms such as city council’s official twitter account, which did communicate information to the public, there was not sufficient information provided.
However, Mfikoe clarified that, “City Power does not load shed; it is an Eskom-driven process… City Power cannot be held responsible for Eskom’s internal issues.”
“If Eskom does not give us information in the time then how do we give information to our customers? That is one of the things we need to talk to them about and correct with them.”
According to Mfikoe, Eskom typically provided the municipality with load-shedding schedules, which indicated when load shedding would take place.
However, Eskom only announced the forced power outages at about 4pm on 21 November when they were set to implement the outages, despite previously denying that it would be load shedding, Mfikoe said.
Mfikoe said problems arose because Eskom announced it would be load shedding on 23 November when in fact there was no schedule for Sunday and as a result used Saturday’s schedule on the day without communicating this.
“We need to realise that Eskom has its own issues. We need the customers to understand that some of these things are way out of our control. I agree that we need to communicate in time the proper information, but that is only dependent on whether we have proper information from Eskom.”
Mfikoe noted that there were problems accessing City Power’s website, adding that in her personal capacity she could not access it using her cellphone. However, she said these issues had been addressed.
The council would be engaging with Eskom to establish a better communication strategy and more effective ways of executing load shedding, Mfikoe said.
Meanwhile, City Power has since said that it would use its twitter account to update customers about future load shedding programmes.
