The City of Cape Town wishes to thank its customers for their patience during Level 5 lockdown when it was unable to attend to electricity service requests of a non-urgent nature. During this time it attended to more than 11 000 service requests, including faulty cables, exposed and dangerous wires, no power, major route streetlight outages and repairs that were imperative from a safety perspective.
In the five weeks between 27 March 2020 and 30 April 2020, the City’s Electricity Generation and Distribution Department attended to 11 444 service requests.
These included emergency and priority repairs to damaged infrastructure, streetlights on main roads and large sections where streetlights were not working. It also included repairs to infrastructure equipment failures where there was a loss of supply or where there was a danger to the public. Much of the efforts were to ensure the safety of informal settlement and lower income areas by making sure reported outages were timeously repaired and supply was restored.
The Department postponed requests which it could not complete during this period due to the lockdown regulations or intricate community dynamics where restoring service was going to require an operation with law enforcement support. This included areas where the City was unable to gain the support and co-operation of the community for the removal of the unsafe illegal connections. These connections caused the network to overload.
‘During the lockdown period, the City primarily offered limited services due to a reduced staff compliment in adherence to COVID-19 regulations. This service included network faults and breakdowns, life-threatening situations or emergencies, and repairs that were imperative from a safety perspective. The Department was able to attend to these while taking the necessary safety precautions including social distancing, wearing of masks and regular hand sanitising. Teams even attended to the rescue of three cats stuck up live electricity poles in Steenberg, Wesbank and Bonteheuwel respectively – somewhat of an odd trend during this time. Our members of staff have really gone above and beyond the call of duty in service to all the inhabitants of Cape Town. Their commitment shows how it is important that we all do our bit to help get us through this crisis. We thank our customers for their patience while we sort out the non-life threatening or non-priority requests that came through during the Level 5 lockdown.
‘It is also important to note that repairs to streetlights that were faulty as a result of vandalism and theft were not prioritised during this period unless an assessment showed that not repairing these held a safety risk for the community or electricity staff,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy and Climate Change, Councillor Phindile Maxiti.
As of 1 May 2020, South Africa moved to the Level 4 containment stage in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The City is phasing in allowable operations within Level 4 of the COVID-19 lockdown period.
The fixing of individual streetlights will also be phased in again over the next few weeks. Councillor Maxiti is also engaging with the communities where the removal of unsafe illegal connections, which caused the network to overload, has not been possible. Obtaining supplies from suppliers and service request backlogs might affect operations and the City thanks customers for their understanding in advance. This Department continued to do absolutely all it could to ensure that reliable electricity services were delivered during this period and we thank our customers for their patience.