The City of Cape Town’s Electricity Generation and Distribution Department has attended to more than 150 000 electricity service requests since June, while adhering to the COVID-19 health and safety regulations. The City would like to thank customers for their patience as it returns to its usual full service plan and standard turnaround times on attending to electricity service requests. City teams will continue to do the best they can to assist customers in the shortest time possible.
‘Thank you to our customers for their patience while national lockdown regulations required us to limit our service offering during the more severe COVID-19 lockdown periods. Due to the resultant reduced capacity, the Department prioritised multiple streetlight outages, power outages and instances where electricity faults were a safety hazard to members of the public. Some service requests were therefore flagged for later attention as soon as it was possible to attend to, such as some single streetlight outages requests. I also want to thank City staff who worked under very challenging circumstances especially during the early stages of the lockdown.
‘In total, we have attended to more than 150 000 service requests since June, while taking the necessary safety precautions including social distancing, the wearing of masks and regular hand sanitising,’ said the City’s Executive Mayor, Alderman Dan Plato.
‘There are large volumes of COVID-19 backlog requests, specifically streetlight repairs, however, even during the peak period of the COVID-19 lockdown, we were able to resolve more than 90 000 requests. We’re attending to the outstanding requests as quickly as possible. Service requests and turnaround times could also be affected by any sudden COVID-19-related closure of depots. The City thanks customers for their patience, while the City’s staff works through the remaining service request backlogs. We are doing the best we can and continue to work as quickly as possible. We also encourage residents to look after the infrastructure in their communities and report any tampering and illegal connections,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy and Climate Change, Councillor Phindile Maxiti.
The Department is working hard to bring its turnaround time down to the one or two days residents had become used to. The fixing of individual streetlights has also been phased in again over the past few weeks and backlogs are being attended to.
Anonymous tip-offs welcomed:
Residents can give anonymous tip offs if they are aware of illegal activity that is taking place; that has happened or is still to happen. Please call 112 from a cell phone (toll free) and 107 from a landline or 021 480 7700 for emergencies.
To report damage to municipal electrical infrastructure, please only use one channel and don’t log the same request multiple times:
SMS: 31220 (standard charges apply)
Email: power@capetown.gov.za
Online: www.capetown.gov.za/servicerequests